Isaiah 34 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

Come close, you nations, and listen. Pay attention, you peoples. Let the earth hear — and everything in it, the world and all that springs from it.

Because Yahweh is furious with all the nations, burning with anger against all their armies. He has marked them for destruction, handed them over to slaughter.

Their slain will be thrown out, the stench will rise from their corpses, and the mountains will be drenched with their blood.

All the stars in the sky will dissolve, the heavens will be rolled up like a scroll, and all their host will wither and fall — like a leaf dropping from a vine, like a shriveled fig from a tree.

When my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens, watch — it comes down on Edom, on the people I have sentenced to destruction.

Yahweh's sword is soaked with blood, coated with fat — the blood of lambs and goats, the fat from the kidneys of rams. Because Yahweh has a sacrifice in Bozrah, a great slaughter in the land of Edom.

Wild oxen will go down with them, young bulls with the mighty ones. Their land will be drunk with blood, their dust made rich with fat.

Because Yahweh has a day of payback, a year of settling accounts for the cause of Zion.

Edom's streams will turn to tar, her dust to sulfur, her land will become burning pitch.

Night and day it will never go out; its smoke will rise forever. Generation after generation it will lie in ruins; no one will ever pass through it again.

The desert owl and the screech owl will claim it, the great owl and the raven will nest there. Yahweh will stretch out over it the measuring line of chaos and the plumb line of emptiness.

Her nobles — there is nothing left there to call a kingdom, and all her princes will come to nothing.

Thorns will overrun her fortresses, nettles and thistles will fill her strongholds. She will become a haunt for jackals, a home for ostriches.

Desert creatures will meet with hyenas, and wild goats will call out to each other. There too the night creature will settle and find for herself a resting place.

There the arrow snake will nest and lay eggs, hatch them and gather her young under her shadow. There too the vultures will gather, each one with its mate.

Search through Yahweh's scroll and read it: not one of these will be missing, none will lack its mate. Because his mouth has given the command, and his breath has gathered them together.

He himself has cast the lot for them, his hand has divided it out to them with the measuring line. They will possess it forever; generation after generation they will live there.