Isaiah 34: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Isaiah calls all nations and the whole earth to listen as he announces the LORD's anger against them and their armies, with the slain left unburied and the sky itself rolled up like a scroll. The message then narrows to Edom: the LORD's sword comes down on it like a sacrifice at Bozrah, and its land is turned to burning tar and sulfur. What is left is a permanent ruin measured out with a line of chaos, where thorns grow in the palaces and desert animals and birds take possession. The chapter ends by saying these creatures will each be there with a mate, since the LORD himself has assigned them the land.

Claim by Claim

1. 34:1
   • The nations are commanded to come near and hear.
   • The peoples are commanded to pay attention.
   • The earth and everything that fills it are called to hear.
   • The world and everything that comes forth from it are called to hear.
2. 34:2
   • The LORD is angry with all the nations.
   • The LORD's fury is against all their armies.
   • He has devoted them to destruction.
   • He has handed them over to slaughter.
3. 34:3
   • Their slain will be thrown out unburied.
   • The stench will rise from their corpses.
   • The mountains will be dissolved by their blood.
4. 34:4
   • All the host of heaven will rot away and dissolve.
   • The heavens will be rolled up like a scroll.
   • All their host will wither and fall.
   • Their falling is like a leaf falling from a vine.
   • Their falling is like withered fruit falling from a fig tree.
5. 34:5
   • The LORD says his sword has drunk its fill in the heavens.
   • The sword will come down upon Edom.
   • The sword will come down upon the people the LORD has devoted to destruction.
   • The sword comes down for judgment.
6. 34:6
   • The sword of the LORD is filled with blood.
   • The sword is made greasy with fat.
   • The sword is covered with the blood of lambs and goats.
   • The sword is covered with the fat of the kidneys of rams.
   • The LORD has a sacrifice in Bozrah.
   • The LORD has a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
7. 34:7
   • Wild oxen will go down with them.
   • Young bulls will go down with the mighty bulls.
   • Their land will be soaked with blood.
   • Their dust will be made greasy with fat.
8. 34:8
   • It is a day of vengeance belonging to the LORD.
   • It is a year of recompense for the cause of Zion.
9. 34:9
   • Edom's streams will be turned into pitch.
   • Edom's dust will be turned into sulfur.
   • Edom's land will become burning pitch.
10. 34:10
    • It will not be quenched by night or by day.
    • Its smoke will go up forever.
    • It will lie waste from generation to generation.
    • No one will pass through it forever and ever.
11. 34:11
    • Wilderness birds will take possession of it, though the exact creatures named are uncertain.
    • An owl and a raven will dwell in it.
    • He will stretch out over it a measuring line of formlessness.
    • He will set over it stones of emptiness.
12. 34:12
    • The verse is ambiguous: either her nobles will be summoned to the kingdom and none will be there, or there will be no kingdom left for them to proclaim.
    • All her princes will come to nothing.
13. 34:13
    • Thorns will grow up in her palaces.
    • Nettles and brambles will grow in her fortresses.
    • It will become a dwelling place for jackals.
    • It will become an enclosure for ostriches.
14. 34:14
    • Desert creatures will meet with howling creatures.
    • A hairy goat-demon will call to its fellow.
    • A night creature will settle down there.
    • The night creature will find a resting place for herself.
15. 34:15
    • A creature there, whose identity is uncertain, will make her nest.
    • She will lay eggs.
    • She will hatch them.
    • She will gather her young under her shadow.
    • Birds of prey will gather there.
    • Each bird of prey will be there with its mate.
16. 34:16
    • The hearers are commanded to seek out of the book of the LORD and read.
    • Not one of these creatures will be missing.
    • None of them will lack her mate.
    • The LORD's own mouth has commanded it.
    • His spirit has gathered them.
17. 34:17
    • He has cast the lot for them.
    • His hand has divided the land among them by measuring line.
    • They will possess it forever.
    • They will dwell in it from generation to generation.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

34:1

A nation is a country and all the people who live in it.

34:2

"Set apart for destruction" translates a Hebrew term (herem) for putting something permanently beyond human use by handing it over to God. In warfare it meant that nothing was to be kept as plunder; everything was to be destroyed.

34:3

Leaving corpses unburied was the deepest disgrace an ancient army could inflict. Burial was considered owed even to enemies, so bodies left in the open marked total defeat.

34:4

Books at this time were scrolls, long sheets wound onto rollers. A scroll being rolled up is one being closed and put away. The King James "host of heaven" is a military word for the stars, pictured as an army drawn up in ranks.

34:5

Edom ("Idumea" in the King James, the Greek form of the name) was the kingdom in the rocky country south-east of the Dead Sea. Its people were reckoned as descendants of Esau, the brother of Jacob (Israel), which made them Israel's nearest kin and one of its most persistent enemies; later writers accuse Edom of siding with Babylon when Jerusalem fell.

34:6

Bozrah was Edom's chief city. The fat around the kidneys was the portion of a sacrificial animal reserved to be burned on the altar, so naming it turns the battlefield slaughter into the language of a sacrifice, with Edom as the animal and the LORD as the one who kills it.

34:7

The King James "unicorn" renders a Hebrew word for a large, untamable wild ox (probably the aurochs, extinct in the 1600s); the single-horned creature comes from the ancient Greek and Latin translations. The oxen, young bulls and "strong ones" may stand for Edom's leaders and fighting men as well as for actual animals.

34:8

The wording is drawn from the law courts: "the cause of Zion" is literally Zion's lawsuit, a case brought for judgment, and "recompense" is the settlement awarded. Zion is the hill of Jerusalem, used as a name for the city and its people.

34:9

Bitumen (tar) and sulfur both occur naturally in the region around the Dead Sea. The wording deliberately recalls the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis.

34:10

The King James says the fire will not be "quenched." Quenched is an old word for put out.

34:11

The Hebrew names of these four birds are uncertain and translators differ; what is clear is that they are creatures of ruins and wasteland. A measuring line and a plumb line are a builder's tools for laying out a new structure, here they are used to lay out desolation instead. The two Hebrew words behind "chaos" and "emptiness" are the same pair translated "without form, and void" in the opening lines of Genesis.

34:12

The Hebrew is difficult and can be read two ways: either no nobles are left to proclaim a king, or the nobles are summoned to a kingdom that no longer exists. Edom was governed by chiefs and kings; the verse means that whole ruling class is gone.

34:13

Thorns growing inside palaces is standard ancient imagery for a city abandoned long enough for the desert to take it back. The two creatures the King James calls "dragons" and "owls" are most likely jackals and ostriches, though the identifications are debated.

34:14

The King James "satyr" translates a Hebrew word meaning "hairy ones," used both for wild goats and for goat-shaped spirits believed to haunt ruined places; the ambiguity is in the original. "Night creature" is the Hebrew word lilith, a name that later Jewish tradition attached to a night demon. Here she is simply listed among the inhabitants of the waste.

34:15

The birds the King James calls "vultures" are more precisely kites, scavenging birds of prey.

34:16

"The book of the LORD" is literally a scroll. What it refers to is disputed: perhaps this written collection of prophecies, perhaps a record in which the LORD's decrees are kept. The reader is told to check the list of creatures against it and see that none is missing.

34:17

Casting lots and measuring land with a cord are how territory was divided among the tribes of Israel, the standard vocabulary for an inheritance formally handed over and held permanently. Here the wild creatures are the ones who receive Edom as their allotted property.