Isaiah 34:2-7
New English Translation
2 For the Lord is angry at all the nations
and furious with all their armies.
He will annihilate them and slaughter them.
3 Their slain will be left unburied,[a]
their corpses will stink;[b]
the hills will soak up their blood.[c]
4 All the stars in the sky will fade away,[d]
the sky will roll up like a scroll;
all its stars will wither,
like a leaf withers and falls from a vine
or a fig withers and falls from a tree.[e]
5 He says,[f] “Indeed, my sword has slaughtered heavenly powers.[g]
Look, it now descends on Edom,[h]
on the people I will annihilate in judgment.”
6 The Lord’s sword is dripping with blood,
it is covered[i] with fat;
it drips[j] with the blood of young rams and goats
and is covered[k] with the fat of rams’ kidneys.
For the Lord is holding a sacrifice[l] in Bozrah,[m]
a bloody[n] slaughter in the land of Edom.
7 Wild oxen will be slaughtered[o] along with them,
as well as strong bulls.[p]
Their land is drenched with blood,
their soil is covered with fat.
Footnotes
- Isaiah 34:3 tn Heb “will be cast aside”; NASB, NIV “thrown out.”
- Isaiah 34:3 tn Heb “[as for] their corpses, their stench will arise.”
- Isaiah 34:3 tn Heb “hills will dissolve from their blood.”
- Isaiah 34:4 tc Heb “and all the host of heaven will rot.” The Qumran scroll 1QIsaa inserts “and the valleys will be split open,” but this reading may be influenced by Mic 1:4. On the other hand, the statement, if original, could have been omitted by homoioarcton, a scribe’s eye jumping from the conjunction prefixed to “the valleys” to the conjunction prefixed to the verb “rot.”
- Isaiah 34:4 tn Heb “like the withering of a leaf from a vine, and like the withering from a fig tree.”
- Isaiah 34:5 tn The words “he says” are supplied in the translation for clarification. The Lord speaks at this point.
- Isaiah 34:5 tn Heb “indeed [or “for”] my sword is drenched in the heavens.” The Qumran scroll 1QIsaa has תראה (“[my sword] appeared [in the heavens]”), but this is apparently an attempt to make sense out of a difficult metaphor. Cf. NIV “My sword has drunk its fill in the heavens.”sn In v. 4 the “host of the heaven” refers to the heavenly luminaries (stars and planets, see, among others, Deut 4:19; 17:3; 2 Kgs 17:16; 21:3, 5; 23:4-5; 2 Chr 33:3, 5) that populate the divine/heavenly assembly in mythological and prescientific Israelite thought (see Job 38:7; Isa 14:13). As in 24:21, they are viewed here as opposing God and being defeated in battle.
- Isaiah 34:5 sn Edom is mentioned here as epitomizing the hostile nations that oppose God.
- Isaiah 34:6 tn The verb is a rare Hotpaal passive form. See GKC 150 §54.h.
- Isaiah 34:6 tn The words “it drips” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.
- Isaiah 34:6 tn The words “and is covered” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.
- Isaiah 34:6 tn Heb “for there is a sacrifice to the Lord.”
- Isaiah 34:6 sn The Lord’s judgment of Edom is compared to a bloody sacrificial scene.
- Isaiah 34:6 tn Heb “great” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV).
- Isaiah 34:7 tn Heb “will go down”; NAB “shall be struck down.”
- Isaiah 34:7 tn Heb “and bulls along with strong ones.” Perhaps this refers to the leaders.
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