Come Close, All Nations
Nations are called to hear something terrible: our Father's sword glutted in Edom, blood on the mountains, streams turned to pitch and smoke that never stops rising. Owls and jackals inherit the ruins, measured with a line of chaos. No relief is offered — only vindication for Zion.
34 1Come close, you nations, and listen; pay attention, you peoples! Let the earth hear, and all that fills it, the world, and everything it brings forth. 2For our Father is filled with wrath against all the nations, and his fury is against all their armies. He has devoted them to destruction, has given them over to slaughter. 3Their slain will be thrown out, the stench of their corpses will rise, and the mountains will flow with their blood. 4All the stars of heaven will rot away, and the skies will be rolled up like a scroll. All that starry host will wither, as a leaf withers and falls from the vine, like a shriveled fig from the fig tree.
5When my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens, look—it comes down in judgment upon Edom, upon the people I have devoted to destruction. 6Our Father has a sword; it is sated with blood, gorged with fat, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams. For our Father holds a sacrifice in Bozrah, a great slaughter in the land of Edom. 7The wild oxen will fall with them, and the young bulls with the mighty ones. Their land will drink its fill of blood, and their soil will be gorged with fat. 8For our Father has a day of justice, a year of vindication for the cause of Zion. 9Edom's streams will be turned into pitch, her soil into sulfur, and her land will become burning pitch. 10Night and day it will not be quenched; its smoke will rise forever. From generation to generation it will lie waste; no one will pass through it ever again. 11The desert owl and the screech owl will possess it; the great owl and the raven will dwell in it. our Father will stretch the measuring line of chaos over it, and the plumb line of emptiness. 12Its nobles will have nothing there to call a kingdom, and all its princes will come to nothing. 13Thorns will overgrow its strongholds, nettles and brambles its fortresses. It will become a haunt for jackals, a home for ostriches. 14Wildcats will meet with hyenas, and wild goats will call out to one another; there too the night creature will settle and find herself a place of rest. 15There the owl will nest and lay her eggs, hatch them and gather her young under her shadow; there too the hawks will gather, each with her mate.
16Search the scroll of our Father and read: not one of these will be missing, not one will lack her mate. For his mouth has commanded it, and his Spirit has gathered them. 17He has cast the lot for them; his hand has measured out their portion with the line. They will possess it forever and dwell there from generation to generation.
