Introduction: If there is a real story on the TV involving visible trauma there is often a warning that something is coming up which might be upsetting! In movies they just pile trauma, upon blood and guts. If you have an imagination this passage deserves a warning! I remember the scenes and smells from the inter-tribal fighting in my time in Africa in the 1960’s!
1 Draw near, O nations, to hear,
and give attention, O peoples!
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 host;
he has devoted them to destruction, has given them over for slaughter. – This is not ‘weak and mild Jesus stuff’ as too often people desire the Bible to be! The underlined words give the sharp, loud and universal order to everyone within hearing; the words in red surely express red hot anger, presumably justified!
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. – Spilt faeces stinks; old blood smells unsettlingly; separated heads, limbs, piles of maggots look nauseatingly revolting!
All their host shall fall,
as leaves fall from the vine,
like leaves falling from the fig tree.
5 For my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens;
behold, it descends for judgment upon Edom,
upon the people I have devoted to destruction. – It is not as if only one leaf has fallen off the tree of life – the mountains flow with blood and are littered with dead bodies!
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 drink its fill of blood,
and their soil shall be gorged with fat.
8 For the LORD has a day of vengeance,
a year of recompense for the cause of Zion. – Normally animals were sacrificed upon the altars of Israel. Here people are slaughtered on the justified vengeance of Almighty God! But there is more to come tomorrow!
Rev 20: 11&12a – Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne…. – I think that this is speaking of another judgment not the Isa 34 one!
Prayer: Thank You Father that You have provided a way of escape from Your Judgement.
As I read it! 