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Judgement on the Nations

34Draw near, O nations, to hear;
   O peoples, give heed!
Let the earth hear, and all that fills it;
   the world, and all that comes from it.
² For the Lord is enraged against all the nations,
   and furious against all their hordes;
   he has doomed them, has given them over for slaughter.
³ Their slain shall be cast out,
   and the stench of their corpses shall rise;
   the mountains shall flow with their blood.
⁴ All the host of heaven shall rot away,
   and the skies roll up like a scroll.
All their host shall wither
   like a leaf withering on a vine,
   or fruit withering on a fig tree.

⁵ When my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens,
   lo, it will descend upon Edom,
   upon the people I have doomed to judgement.
⁶ The Lord has a sword; it is sated with blood,
   it is gorged 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.
⁷ Wild oxen shall fall with them,
   and young steers with the mighty bulls.
Their land shall be soaked with blood,
   and their soil made rich with fat.

⁸ For the Lord has a day of vengeance,
   a year of vindication by Zion’s cause.^*
9 And the streams of Edom^* shall be turned into pitch,
   and her soil into sulphur;
   her land shall become burning pitch.
¹⁰ Night and day it shall not be quenched;
   its smoke shall go up for ever.
From generation to generation it shall lie waste;
   no one shall pass through it for ever and ever.
¹¹ But the hawk^* and the hedgehog^* shall possess it;
   the owl^* and the raven shall live in it.
He shall stretch the line of confusion over it,
   and the plummet of chaos over^* its nobles.
¹² They shall name it No Kingdom There,
   and all its princes shall be nothing.
¹³ Thorns shall grow over its strongholds,
   nettles and thistles in its fortresses.
It shall be the haunt of jackals,
   an abode for ostriches.
¹⁴ Wildcats shall meet with hyenas,
   goat-demons shall call to each other;
there too Lilith shall repose,
   and find a place to rest.
¹⁵ There shall the owl nest
   and lay and hatch and brood in its shadow;
there too the buzzards shall gather,
   each one with its mate.
¹⁶ Seek and read from the book of the Lord:
   Not one of these shall be missing;
   none shall be without its mate.
For the mouth of the Lord has commanded,
   and his spirit has gathered them.
¹⁷ He has cast the lot for them,
   his hand has portioned it out to them with the line;
they shall possess it for ever,
   from generation to generation they shall live in it.