Approach, O nations, and listen,
Give heed, O peoples!
Let the earth and those in it hear;
The world, and what it brings forth.
For the LORD is angry at all the nations,
Furious at all their host;
He has doomed them, consigned them to slaughter.
Their slain shall be left lying,
And the stench of their corpses shall mount;
And the hills shall be drenched with their blood,
a1QIsa reads “And the valleys shall be cleft, / And all the host of heaven shall wither.”All the host of heaven shall molder.-a
The heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll,
And all their host shall wither
Like a leaf withering on the vine,
Or shriveled fruit on a fig tree.
For My sword shall b1QIsa reads “be seen”; cf. Targum.be drunk-b in the sky;
Lo, it shall come down upon Edom,
Upon the people I have doomed,
To wreak judgment.
The LORD has a sword; it is sated with blood,
It is gorged with fat—
The blood of lambs and he-goats,
The kidney fat of rams.
For the LORD holds a sacrifice in Bozrah,
A great slaughter in the land of Edom.
Wild oxen shall fall cEmendation yields “with fatted calves.”with them,-c
Young bulls with mighty steers;
And their land shall be drunk with blood,
Their soil shall be saturated with fat.
For it is the LORD’s day of retribution,
The year of vindication for Zion’s cause.
ItsdI.e., Edom’s. streams shall be turned to pitch
And its soil to sulfur.
Its land shall become burning pitch,
Night and day it shall never go out;
Its smoke shall rise for all time.
Through the ages it shall lie in ruins;
Through the aeons none shall traverse it.
eMeaning of Heb. uncertain.Jackdaws and owls-e shall possess it;
Great owls and ravens shall dwell there.
He shall measure it with a line of chaos
And with weights of emptiness.fI.e., He shall plan chaos and emptiness for it; cf. 28.17; Lam. 2.8.
eMeaning of Heb. uncertain.It shall be called, “No kingdom is there,”-e
Its nobles and all its lords shall be nothing.
Thorns shall grow up in its palaces,
Nettles and briers in its strongholds.
It shall be a home of jackals,
An abode of ostriches.
gMost of the creatures in vv. 14–15 cannot be identified with certainty.Wildcats shall meet hyenas,
Goat-demons shall greet each other;
There too the lilithhA kind of demon. shall repose
And find herself a resting place.
There the arrow-snake shall nest and lay eggs,
And shall brood and hatch in its shade.
There too the buzzards shall gather
With one another.
Search and read it in the scroll of the LORD:
Not one of these shall be absent,
Not one shall miss its fellow.
For HisiHeb. “My.” mouth has spoken,
It is His spirit that has assembled them,
And it is He who apportioned it to them by lot,
Whose hand divided it for them with the line.
They shall possess it for all time,
They shall dwell there through the ages.
