Yesaya 34:2-6

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.”

34:6 The Lord’s sword is dripping with blood,

it is covered ⁹  with fat;

it drips ¹⁰  with the blood of young rams and goats

and is covered ¹¹  with the fat of rams’ kidneys.

For the Lord is holding a sacrifice ¹²  in Bozrah, ¹³ 

a bloody ¹⁴  slaughter in the land of Edom.

[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]  ⁴ 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]  ⁵ tn Heb “like the withering of a leaf from a vine, and like the withering from a fig tree.”

[34:5]  ⁶ tn The words “he says” are supplied in the translation for clarification. The Lord speaks at this point.

[34:5]  ⁷ 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]  sn In v. 4 the “host of the heaven” refers to the heavenly luminaries (stars and planets, see, among others, Deut 4:19; 17:3; 2 Kgs 17:16; 21:3, 5; 23:4-5; 2 Chr 33:3, 5) that populate the divine/heavenly assembly in mythological and prescientific Israelite thought (see Job 38:7; Isa 14:13). As in 24:21, they are viewed here as opposing God and being defeated in battle.

[34:5]  ⁸ sn Edom is mentioned here as epitomizing the hostile nations that oppose God.

[34:6]  ⁹ tn The verb is a rare Hotpaal passive form. See GKC 150 §54.h.

[34:6]  ¹⁰ tn The words “it drips” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[34:6]  ¹¹ tn The words “and is covered” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[34:6]  ¹² tn Heb “for there is a sacrifice to the Lord.”

[34:6]  ¹³ sn The Lord’s judgment of Edom is compared to a bloody sacrificial scene.

[34:6]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “great” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV).