34 Come close you nations to listen.

≈ and you peoples pay attention.

The earth and everything that fills it must listen—

the world and everything that it’s produced.

2 Yahweh is very angry at all the nations

and furious at all their armies.

He’ll completely destroy them—

he’ll hand them over to be slaughtered.

3 Then their slain will be tossed out

and the hills will soak up their blood,

and their corpses will release a stench.

4 All the stars in the sky will rot away,

and the skies will be rolled up like a scroll.

All their objects will wither like leaves falling off a grapevine,

≈ and like withered fruit dropping off a fig tree.[ref]

5 Once my sword will have drunk its fill in the skies/heavens,

look, it will descend on Edom and on the people who will receive total destruction as my judgement.[ref]

6 Yahweh’s sword is full of blood and fattened with fat

from the blood of lambs and goats, and from the fat from rams’ kidneys,

because Yahweh has a sacrifice in Botsrah,

and a great slaughter in the nation of Edom.

7 Wild bulls will go down with them,

as well as young bulls and powerful ones.

Their land will drink its fill of blood,

and the dust will be smeared with fat,

8 because Yahweh will have his day of vengeance—

a year of retribution for Tsiyyon’s (Zion’s) sake.

9 Its streams will be changed into tar,

and its dust into sulfur,

and its land will become burning pitch.

10 It’ll burn night and day and its smoke will permanently go up.

It’ll be a wasteland throughout the generations

and no one will ever pass through it again.[ref]

11 Desert owls and hedgehogs will take it over—

≈ owls and ravens will live there.

Yahweh will stretch the measuring line of ruin over it

and plumb lines of destruction.

12 Its nobles will have nothing left to call a kingdom,

≈ and all its princes will become nobodies.

13 Thorns will grow up its fortresses.

≈ Nettles and thornbushes will grow on its high walls,

and it’ll become a place for jackals to live in—

grass for ostriches.

14 Wild animals will meet hyenas,

and the wild goats will bleat to each other.

The lilith owl[fn] will rest there,

≈ and find a place for itself to nest.

15 Owls will nest and lay eggs there,

and hatch and brood the chicks in its shade.

Indeed the hawks will gather there with their mates.

16 Look through Yahweh’s scroll and read—not one of them will be missing.

Not one will lack its mate because Yahweh has commanded it,

and his spirit will gather them there.

17 He has thrown dice for them,

and his hand divided out their territory with a measuring line.

It’ll be theirs forever—they’ll live there throughout the generations.