Yesaya 24:1-5

The Lord Will Judge the Earth

24:1 Look, the Lord is ready to devastate the earth

and leave it in ruins;

he will mar its surface

and scatter its inhabitants.

24:2 Everyone will suffer – the priest as well as the people, ¹ 

the master as well as the servant, ² 

the elegant lady as well as the female attendant, ³ 

the seller as well as the buyer, ⁴ 

the borrower as well as the lender, ⁵ 

the creditor as well as the debtor. ⁶ 

24:3 The earth will be completely devastated

and thoroughly ransacked.

For the Lord has decreed this judgment. ⁷ 

24:4 The earth ⁸  dries up ⁹  and withers,

the world shrivels up and withers;

the prominent people of the earth ¹⁰  fade away.

24:5 The earth is defiled by ¹¹  its inhabitants, ¹² 

for they have violated laws,

disregarded the regulation, ¹³ 

and broken the permanent treaty. ¹⁴ 

Yesaya 34:4-10

34:4 All the stars in the sky will fade away, ¹⁵ 

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. ¹⁶ 

34:5 He says, ¹⁷  “Indeed, my sword has slaughtered heavenly powers. ¹⁸ 

Look, it now descends on Edom, ¹⁹ 

on the people I will annihilate in judgment.”

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

it is covered ²⁰  with fat;

it drips ²¹  with the blood of young rams and goats

and is covered ²²  with the fat of rams’ kidneys.

For the Lord is holding a sacrifice ²³  in Bozrah, ²⁴ 

a bloody ²⁵  slaughter in the land of Edom.

34:7 Wild oxen will be slaughtered ²⁶  along with them,

as well as strong bulls. ²⁷ 

Their land is drenched with blood,

their soil is covered with fat.

34:8 For the Lord has planned a day of revenge, ²⁸ 

a time when he will repay Edom for her hostility toward Zion. ²⁹ 

34:9 Edom’s ³⁰  streams will be turned into pitch

and her soil into brimstone;

her land will become burning pitch.

34:10 Night and day it will burn; ³¹ 

its smoke will ascend continually.

Generation after generation it will be a wasteland

and no one will ever pass through it again.

[24:2]  ¹ tn Heb “and it will be like the people, like the priest.”

[24:2]  ² tn Heb “like the servant, like his master.”

[24:2]  ³ tn Heb “like the female servant, like her mistress.”

[24:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “like the buyer, like the seller.”

[24:2]  ⁵ tn Heb “like the lender, like the borrower.”

[24:2]  ⁶ tn Heb “like the creditor, just as the one to whom he lends.”

[24:3]  ⁷ tn Heb “for the Lord has spoken this word.”

[24:4]  ⁸ tn Some prefer to read “land” here, but the word pair אֶרֶץ/תֵּבֵל (erets/tevel [see the corresponding term in the parallel line]) elsewhere clearly designates the earth/world (see 1 Sam 2:8; 1 Chr 16:30; Job 37;12; Pss 19:4; 24:1; 33:8; 89:11; 90:2; 96:13; 98:9; Prov 8:26, 31; Isa 14:16-17; 34:1; Jer 10:12; 51:15; Lam 4:12). According to L. Stadelmann, תבל designates “the habitable part of the world” (The Hebrew Conception of the World [AnBib], 130).

[24:4]  ⁹ tn Or “mourns” (BDB 5 s.v. אָבַל). HALOT 6-7 lists the homonyms I אבל (“mourn”) and II אבל (“dry up”). They propose the second here on the basis of parallelism.

[24:4]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the height of the people of the earth.” The translation assumes an emendation of the singular form מְרוֹם (mÿrom, “height of”) to the plural construct מְרֹמֵי (mÿrome, “high ones of”; note the plural verb at the beginning of the line), and understands the latter as referring to the prominent people of human society.

[24:5]  ¹¹ tn Heb “beneath”; cf. KJV, ASV, NRSV “under”; NAB “because of.”

[24:5]  ¹² sn Isa 26:21 suggests that the earth’s inhabitants defiled the earth by shedding the blood of their fellow human beings. See also Num 35:33-34, which assumes that bloodshed defiles a land.

[24:5]  ¹³ tn Heb “moved past [the?] regulation.”

[24:5]  ¹⁴ tn Or “everlasting covenant” (KJV, NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT); NAB “the ancient covenant”; CEV “their agreement that was to last forever.”

[24:5]  sn For a lengthy discussion of the identity of this covenant/treaty, see R. Chisholm, “The ‘Everlasting Covenant’ and the ‘City of Chaos’: Intentional Ambiguity and Irony in Isaiah 24,” CTR 6 (1993): 237-53. In this context, where judgment comes upon both the pagan nations and God’s covenant community, the phrase “permanent treaty” is intentionally ambiguous. For the nations this treaty is the Noahic mandate of Gen 9:1-7 with its specific stipulations and central regulation (Gen 9:7). By shedding blood, the warlike nations violated this treaty, which promotes population growth and prohibits murder. For Israel, which was also guilty of bloodshed (see Isa 1:15, 21; 4:4), this “permanent treaty” would refer more specifically to the Mosaic Law and its regulations prohibiting murder (Exod 20:13; Num 35:6-34), which are an extension of the Noahic mandate.

[34:4]  ¹⁵ 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]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “like the withering of a leaf from a vine, and like the withering from a fig tree.”

[34:5]  ¹⁷ tn The words “he says” are supplied in the translation for clarification. The Lord speaks at this point.

[34:5]  ¹⁸ 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]  ¹⁹ sn Edom is mentioned here as epitomizing the hostile nations that oppose God.

[34:6]  ²⁰ tn The verb is a rare Hotpaal passive form. See GKC 150 §54.h.

[34:6]  ²¹ tn The words “it drips” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[34:6]  ²² tn The words “and is covered” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[34:6]  ²³ tn Heb “for there is a sacrifice to the Lord.”

[34:6]  ²⁴ sn The Lord’s judgment of Edom is compared to a bloody sacrificial scene.

[34:6]  ²⁵ tn Heb “great” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV).

[34:7]  ²⁶ tn Heb “will go down”; NAB “shall be struck down.”

[34:7]  ²⁷ tn Heb “and bulls along with strong ones.” Perhaps this refers to the leaders.

[34:8]  ²⁸ tn Heb “for a day of vengeance [is] for the Lord.”

[34:8]  ²⁹ tn Heb “a year of repayment for the strife of Zion.” The translation assumes that רִיב (riv) refers to Edom’s hostility toward Zion. Another option is to understand רִיב (riv) as referring to the Lord’s taking up Zion’s cause. In this case one might translate, “a time when he will repay Edom and vindicate Zion.”

[34:9]  ³⁰ tn Heb “her”; the referent (Edom) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[34:10]  ³¹ tn Heb “it will not be extinguished.”