Isaiah 34:2-5

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, ¹ 

their corpses will stink; ² 

the hills will soak up their blood. ³ 

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

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. ⁵ 

34:5 He says, ⁶  “Indeed, my sword has slaughtered heavenly powers. ⁷ 

Look, it now descends on Edom, ⁸ 

on the people I will annihilate in judgment.”

[34:3]  ¹ tn Heb “will be cast aside”; NASB, NIV “thrown out.”

[34:3]  ² tn Heb “[as for] their corpses, their stench will arise.”

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

[34:4]  ¹ 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]  ² tn Heb “like the withering of a leaf from a vine, and like the withering from a fig tree.”

[34:5]  ¹ tn The words “he says” are supplied in the translation for clarification. The Lord speaks at this point.

[34:5]  ² tn Heb “indeed [or “for”] my sword is drenched in the heavens.” The Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a has תראה (“[my sword] appeared [in the heavens]”), but this is apparently an attempt to make sense out of a difficult metaphor. Cf. NIV “My sword has drunk its fill in the heavens.”

[34:5]  ³ sn Edom is mentioned here as epitomizing the hostile nations that oppose God.