The Judgment of the Nations
1You nations, come here and listen;
you peoples, pay attention!
Let the earth and all that fills it hear,
the world and all that comes from it.
2The Lord is angry with all the nations,
furious with all their armies.
He will set them apart for destruction,
giving them over to slaughter.
3Their slain will be thrown out,
and the stench of their corpses will rise;
the mountains will flow with their blood.
4All the stars in the sky will dissolve.
The sky will roll up like a scroll,
and its stars will all wither
as leaves wither on the vine,
and foliage on the fig tree.
The Judgment of Edom
5When my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens,
it will then come down on Edom
and on the people I have set apart for destruction.
6The Lord’s sword is covered with blood.
It drips with fat,
with the blood of lambs and goats,
with the fat of the kidneys of rams.
For the Lord has a sacrifice in Bozrah,
a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
7The wild oxen will be struck down with them,
and young bulls with the mighty bulls.
Their land will be soaked with blood,
and their soil will be saturated with fat.
8For the Lord has a day of vengeance,
a time of paying back Edom
for its hostility against Zion.
9Edom’s streams will be turned into pitch,
her soil into sulfur;
her land will become burning pitch.
10It will never go out — day or night.
Its smoke will go up forever.
It will be desolate, from generation to generation;
no one will pass through it forever and ever.
11Eagle owls and herons will possess it,
and long-eared owls and ravens will dwell there.
The Lord will stretch out a measuring line
and a plumb line over her
for her destruction and chaos.
12No nobles will be left to proclaim a king,
and all her princes will come to nothing.
13Her palaces will be overgrown with thorns;
her fortified cities, with thistles and briers.
She will become a dwelling for jackals,
an abode for ostriches.
14The desert creatures will meet hyenas,
and one wild goat will call to another.
Indeed, the night birds will stay there
and will find a resting place.
15Sand partridges will make their nests there;
they will lay and hatch their eggs
and will gather their broods under their shadows.
Indeed, the birds of prey will gather there,
each with its mate.
16Search and read the scroll of the Lord:
Not one of them will be missing,
none will be lacking its mate,
because he has ordered it by my mouth,
and he will gather them by his Spirit.
17He has cast the lot for them;
his hand allotted their portion with a measuring line.
They will possess it forever;
they will dwell in it from generation to generation.