Scripture Daily

Context No. 662 of 4322 · Isaiah

Context · Reflection

Isaiah 34:1-17: in context

1Come near, you nations, to hear! Listen, you peoples. Let the earth and all it contains hear, the world, and everything that comes from it. 2For the LORD is enraged against all the nations, and angry with all their armies. He has utterly destroyed them. He has given them over for slaughter. 3Their slain will also be cast out, and the stench of their dead bodies will come up. The mountains will melt in their blood. 4All of the army of the sky will be dissolved. The sky will be rolled up like a scroll, and all its armies will fade away, as a leaf fades from off a vine or a fig tree. 5For my sword has drunk its fill in the sky. Behold, it will come down on Edom, and on the people of my curse, for judgment. 6The LORD’s sword is filled with blood. It is covered 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, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom. 7The wild oxen will come down with them, and the young bulls with the mighty bulls; and their land will be drunken with blood, and their dust made greasy with fat. 8For the LORD has a day of vengeance, a year of recompense for the cause of Zion. 9Its streams will be turned into pitch, its dust into sulfur, and its land will become burning pitch. 10It won’t be quenched night or day. Its smoke will go up forever. From generation to generation, it will lie waste. No one will pass through it forever and ever. 11But the pelican and the porcupine will possess it. The owl and the raven will dwell in it. He will stretch the line of confusion over it, and the plumb line of emptiness. 12They shall call its nobles to the kingdom, but none shall be there; and all its princes shall be nothing. 13Thorns will come up in its palaces, nettles and thistles in its fortresses; and it will be a habitation of jackals, a court for ostriches. 14The wild animals of the desert will meet with the wolves, and the wild goat will cry to his fellow. Yes, the night creature shall settle there, and shall find herself a place of rest. 15The arrow snake will make her nest there, and lay, hatch, and gather under her shade. Yes, the kites will be gathered there, every one with her mate. 16Search in the book of the LORD, and read: not one of these will be missing. None will lack her mate. For my mouth has commanded, and his Spirit has gathered them. 17He has cast the lot for them, and his hand has divided it to them with a measuring line. They shall possess it forever. From generation to generation they will dwell in it.

Isaiah 34 is a summons to the whole earth to hear a sentence, and the sentence falls on Edom. The prophet pictures a sword in heaven that has drunk its fill and now comes down, a slaughter in Bozrah described as a sacrifice of lambs and goats and rams, until the land runs with blood and its dust turns greasy with fat. Then the streams become pitch and the soil sulfur, and the smoke goes up forever, and no one passes through again.

What moves into the emptied land is a bestiary. Pelican and owl and raven, jackals and ostriches, wild goats calling to each other, the night creature settling in to rest, the arrow snake nesting and the kites gathering, each one with its mate. It reads like creation run backward, the ordered pairs that once filled an ark now filling a ruin. And the prophet insists it is ordered. Search the book of the LORD and read, he says: not one of these will be missing, for his own hand has cast the lot and drawn the measuring line, and they will hold the place forever. The desolation is not neglect. It is deeded.

Edom's ruin is not abandonment but a place measured out and assigned by God's own hand. When I picture judgment as mere chaos, what am I missing about how deliberate it is?

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