The Day of Yahweh's Vengeance
1 Come near, you nations, to hear! Listen, you peoples. Let the earth and all it contains hear, the world, and everything that comes from it. 2 For Yahweh is enraged against all the nations, and angry with all their armies. He has utterly destroyed them. He has given them over for slaughter. 3 Their slain will also be cast out, and the stench of their dead bodies will come up. The mountains will melt in their blood. 4 All of the army of the sky will be dissolved. The sky will be rolled up like a scroll, and all its armies will fade away, as a leaf fades from off a vine or a fig tree. 5 For my sword has drunk its fill in the sky. Behold, it will come down on Edom, and on the people of my curse, for judgment. 6 Yahweh’s sword is filled with blood. It is covered with fat, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams; for Yahweh has a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom. 7 The wild oxen will come down with them, and the young bulls with the mighty bulls; and their land will be drunken with blood, and their dust made greasy with fat. 8 For Yahweh has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion. 9 Its streams will be turned into pitch, its dust into sulfur, and its land will become burning pitch. 10 It won’t be quenched night or day. Its smoke will go up forever. From generation to generation, it will lie waste. No one will pass through it forever and ever. 11 But the pelican and the porcupine will possess it. The owl and the raven will dwell in it. He will stretch the line of confusion over it, and the plumb line of emptiness. 12 They shall call its nobles to the kingdom, but none shall be there; and all its princes shall be nothing. 13 Thorns will come up in its palaces, nettles and thistles in its fortresses; and it will be a habitation of jackals, a court for ostriches. 14 The wild animals of the desert will meet with the wolves, and the wild goat will cry to his fellow. Yes, the night creature shall settle there, and shall find herself a place of rest. 15 The arrow snake will make her nest there, and lay, hatch, and gather under her shade. Yes, the kites will be gathered there, every one with her mate. 16 Search in the book of Yahweh, and read: not one of these will be missing. None will lack her mate. For my mouth has commanded, and his Spirit has gathered them. 17 He has cast the lot for them, and his hand has divided it to them with a measuring line. They shall possess it forever. From generation to generation they will dwell in it.
The sky is rolled up like a scroll, and a ruined country is surveyed and allocated to owls.
Come near, you nations, to hear! Listen, you peoples. Let the earth and all it contains hear, the world, and everything that comes from it.
The summons of the first chapter, widened. Heaven and earth were called as witnesses there; here the nations are called as defendants.
All of the army of the sky will be dissolved. The sky will be rolled up like a scroll, and all its armies will fade away, as a leaf fades from off a vine or a fig tree.
A scroll rolled up is a document that has been finished with. The last book of Scripture takes the image up unchanged Revelation 6:14, and the second comparison is gentler than the first — a leaf going brown, which is what the stars are said to do.
For my sword has drunk its fill in the sky. Behold, it will come down on Edom, and on the people of my curse, for judgment.
Edom stands for the whole set. It was Esau's line, Israel's nearest relative and most persistent enemy, and the prophets use it repeatedly as the representative of hostility inside the family.
Yahweh’s sword is filled with blood. It is covered with fat, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams; for Yahweh has a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
The judgment is described in the vocabulary of the altar. It is deliberately hard to read, and the passage does not soften it.
9 Its streams will be turned into pitch, its dust into sulfur, and its land will become burning pitch. 10 It won’t be quenched night or day. Its smoke will go up forever. From generation to generation, it will lie waste. No one will pass through it forever and ever.
The imagery is Sodom's Genesis 19:24, and the smoke going up permanently is taken into the last book of Scripture Revelation 14:11. What the passage describes is a place, not a process — the land is uninhabitable, and the smoke is the standing evidence that it is.
But the pelican and the porcupine will possess it. The owl and the raven will dwell in it. He will stretch the line of confusion over it, and the plumb line of emptiness.
The surveyor's tools of chapter twenty-eight Isaiah 28:17, used in reverse. Measuring lines are for laying out a building; these are used to mark out formlessness and void, and both nouns are the ones from the second verse of Genesis.
They shall call its nobles to the kingdom, but none shall be there; and all its princes shall be nothing.
Search in the book of Yahweh, and read: not one of these will be missing. None will lack her mate. For my mouth has commanded, and his Spirit has gathered them.
The strangest verse in the chapter and its most careful. The reader is told to check the list afterward. Every creature named — the jackals, the ostriches, the kites — will be there, in pairs, and the accuracy of the roll call is offered as the test of the whole prophecy.
He has cast the lot for them, and his hand has divided it to them with a measuring line. They shall possess it forever. From generation to generation they will dwell in it.
The land is allotted, as Canaan was allotted to the tribes Joshua 18:10, and the recipients are birds.
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