Isaiah 34:1-4

The Lord Will Judge Edom

34:1 Come near, you nations, and listen!

Pay attention, you people!

The earth and everything it contains must listen,

the world and everything that lives in it. ¹ 

34:2 For the Lord is angry at all the nations

and furious with all their armies.

He will annihilate them and slaughter them.

34:3 Their slain will be left unburied, ² 

their corpses will stink; ³ 

the hills will soak up their blood. ⁴ 

34:4 All the stars in the sky will fade away, ⁵ 

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. ⁶ 

[34:1]  ¹ tn Heb “the world and its offspring”; NASB “the world and all that springs from it.”

[34:3]  ² tn Heb “will be cast aside”; NASB, NIV “thrown out.”

[34:3]  ³ tn Heb “[as for] their corpses, their stench will arise.”

[34:3]  ⁴ tn Heb “hills will dissolve from their blood.”

[34:4]  ⁵ tc Heb “and all the host of heaven will rot.” The Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a 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.”

[34:4]  ⁶ tn Heb “like the withering of a leaf from a vine, and like the withering from a fig tree.”