Come Close, All Nations
34 1 Come close, you nations, and listen; pay attention, you peoples! Let the earth hear, and all that fills it, the world, and everything it brings forth. 2 For our Father is filled with wrath against all the nations, and his fury is against all their armies. He has devoted them to destruction, has given them over to slaughter. a a v2 "Devoted to destruction" means completely and irrevocably handed over to God's judgment — no survivors, no reprieve. 3 Their slain will be thrown out, the stench of their corpses will rise, and the mountains will flow with their blood. 4 All the stars of heaven will rot away, and the skies will be rolled up like a scroll. All that starry host will wither, as a leaf withers and falls from the vine, like a shriveled fig from the fig tree.
5 When my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens, look — it comes down in judgment upon Edom, upon the people I have devoted to destruction. 6 Our Father has a sword; it is sated with blood, gorged with fat, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams. For our Father holds a sacrifice in Bozrah, a great slaughter in the land of Edom. 7 The wild oxen will fall with them, and the young bulls with the mighty ones. Their land will drink its fill of blood, and their soil will be gorged with fat. 8 For our Father has a day of justice, a year of vindication for the cause of Zion. b b v8 When Scripture speaks of our Father's vengeance, it means his justice rising to defend his children — not cold revenge, but a Father settling the score for those who were harmed. 9 Edom's streams will be turned into pitch, her soil into sulfur, and her land will become burning pitch. 10 Night and day it will not be quenched; its smoke will rise forever. From generation to generation it will lie waste; no one will pass through it ever again. 11 The desert owl and the screech owl will possess it; the great owl and the raven will dwell in it. He will stretch the measuring line of chaos over it, and the plumb line of emptiness. 12 Its nobles will have nothing there to call a kingdom, and all its princes will come to nothing. 13 Thorns will overgrow its strongholds, nettles and brambles its fortresses. It will become a haunt for jackals, a home for ostriches. 14 Wildcats will meet with hyenas, and wild goats will call out to one another; there too the night creature will settle and find herself a place of rest. 15 There the owl will nest and lay her eggs, hatch them and gather her young under her shadow; there too the hawks will gather, each with her mate.
16 Search the scroll of our Father and read: not one of these will be missing, not one will lack her mate. For his mouth has commanded it, and his Spirit has gathered them. 17 He has cast the lot for them; his hand has measured out their portion with the line. They will possess it forever and dwell there from generation to generation.