Isaiah 34:1-5-7 The Message (MSG)

1. Draw in close now, nations. Listen carefully,you people. Pay attention!Earth, you, too, and everything in you.World, and all that comes from you.

2-4. And here’s why: God is angry,good and angry with all the nations,So blazingly angry at their arms and armiesthat he’s going to rid earth of them, wipe them out.The corpses, thrown in a heap,will stink like the town dump in midsummer,Their blood flowing off the mountainslike creeks in spring runoff.Stars will fall out of the skylike overripe, rotting fruit in the orchard,And the sky itself will be folded up like a blanketand put away in a closet.All that army of stars, shriveled to nothing,like leaves and fruit in autumn, dropping and rotting!

5-7. “Once I’ve finished with earth and sky,I’ll start in on Edom.I’ll come down hard on Edom,a people I’ve slated for total termination.”God has a sword, thirsty for blood and more blood,a sword hungry for well-fed flesh,Lamb and goat blood,the suet-rich kidneys of rams.Yes, God has scheduled a sacrifice in Bozrah, the capital,the whole country of Edom a slaughterhouse.A wholesale slaughter, wild animalsand farm animals alike slaughtered.The whole country soaked with blood,all the ground greasy with fat.

16-17. Get and read God’s book:None of this is going away,this breeding, brooding evil.God has personally commanded it all.His Spirit set it in motion.God has assigned them their place,decreed their fate in detail.This is permanent—generation after generation, the same old thing.

Isaiah 34