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33Ah, you destroyer, who yourself have not been destroyed; you treacherous one, with whom no one has dealt treacherously! When you have ceased to destroy, you will be destroyed; and when you have stopped dealing treacherously, you will be dealt with treacherously. ²O Lord, be gracious to us; we wait for you. Be our arm every morning, our salvation in the time of trouble. ³At the sound of tumult, peoples fled; before your majesty, nations scattered. ⁴Spoil was gathered as the caterpillar gathers; as locusts leap, they leaped upon it. ⁵The Lord is exalted, he dwells on high; he filled Zion with justice and righteousness; ⁶he will be the stability of your times, abundance of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge; the fear of the Lord is Zion’s treasure. ⁷Listen! the valiant cry in the streets; the envoys of peace weep bitterly. ⁸The highways are deserted, travelers have quit the road. The treaty is broken, its oaths are despised, its obligation is disregarded. ⁹The land mourns and languishes; Lebanon is confounded and withers away; Sharon is like a desert; and Bashan and Carmel shake off their leaves. ¹⁰“Now I will arise,” says the Lord, “now I will lift myself up; now I will be exalted. ¹¹You conceive chaff, you bring forth stubble; your breath is a fire that will consume you. ¹²And the peoples will be as if burned to lime, like thorns cut down, that are burned in the fire.”

¹³Hear, you who are far away, what I have done; and you who are near, acknowledge my might. ¹⁴The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling has seized the godless: “Who among us can live with the devouring fire? Who among us can live with everlasting flames?” ¹⁵Those who walk righteously and speak uprightly, who despise the gain of oppression, who wave away a bribe instead of accepting it, who stop their ears from hearing of bloodshed and shut their eyes from looking on evil, ¹⁶they will live on the heights; their refuge will be the fortresses of rocks; their food will be supplied, their water assured. ¹⁷Your eyes will see the king in his beauty; they will behold a land that stretches far away. ¹⁸Your mind will muse on the terror: “Where is the one who counted? Where is the one who weighed the tribute? Where is the one who counted the towers?” ¹⁹No longer will you see the insolent people, the people of an obscure speech that you cannot comprehend, stammering in a language that you cannot understand. ²⁰Look on Zion, the city of our appointed festivals! Your eyes will see Jerusalem, a quiet habitation, an immovable tent, whose stakes will never be pulled up, and none of whose ropes will be broken. ²¹But there the Lord in majesty will be for us a place of broad rivers and streams, where no galley with oars can go, nor stately ship can pass. ²²For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our ruler, the Lord is our king; he will save us. ²³Your rigging hangs loose; it cannot hold the mast firm in its place, or keep the sail spread out. Then prey and spoil in abundance will be divided; even the lame will fall to plundering. ²⁴And no inhabitant will say, “I am sick”; the people who live there will be forgiven their iniquity.

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. ²For the Lord is enraged against all the nations, and furious against all their hoards; he has doomed them, has given them over for slaughter. ³Their slain shall be cast out, and the stench of their corpses shall rise; the mountains shall flow with their blood. ⁴All 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. ⁵When my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens, lo, it will descend upon Edom, upon the people I have doomed to judgment. ⁶The 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. ⁷Wild 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. ⁸For the Lord has a day of vengeance, a year of vindication by Zion’s cause.

⁹And the streams of Edom shall be turned into pitch, and her soil into sulfur; her land shall become burning pitch. ¹⁰Night and day it shall not be quenched; its smoke shall go up forever. From generation to generation it shall lie waste; no one shall pass through it forever and ever. ¹¹But 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. ¹²They shall name it No Kingdom There, and all its princes shall be nothing. ¹³Thorns shall grow over its strongholds, nettles and thistles in its fortresses. It shall be the haunt of jackals, an abode for ostriches. ¹⁴Wildcats shall meet with hyenas, goat-demons shall call to each other; there too Lilith shall repose, and find a place to rest. ¹⁵There shall the owl nest and lay and hatch and brood in its shadow; there too the buzzards shall gather, each one with its mate. ¹⁶Seek 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. ¹⁷He has cast the lot for them, his hand has portioned it out to them with the line; they shall possess it forever, from generation to generation they shall live in it.