1Come closer, you nations, to listen! Hear this, you peoples. Let the earth and everything in it hear; the world, and everything that comes from it.
2For Yahweh is furious with all the nations, and angry with all their armies. He has completely destroyed them. He has given them over to be killed.
3Their dead bodies will be thrown out, and the stench of their corpses will rise. The mountains will melt with their blood.
4All the stars in the sky will disappear. The sky will be rolled up like a scroll, and all its stars will fade away, like leaves fading from a vine or a fig tree.
5For my sword in the sky has had its fill. Look, it will come down on Edom, and on the people I have destined for punishment, to judge them.
6Yahweh’s sword is covered with blood. It is coated with fat, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat from the kidneys of rams. For Yahweh is holding a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
7The wild oxen will fall alongside them, as will the young bulls with the strong bulls. Their land will become soaked with blood, and their dust made greasy with fat.
8For Yahweh has a day of vengeance, a year to pay back Edom for what it did to Zion.
9Its streams will turn into tar, its dust into sulfur, and its land will become burning tar.
10It will not be put out day or night. Its smoke will rise forever. From generation to generation, it will remain a wasteland. No one will ever travel through it again.
11But owls and porcupines will live there. The owl and the raven will make their home in it. He will stretch out the measuring line of emptiness and the plumb line of desolation over it.
12They will call its nobles to the kingdom, but no one will be there; and all its leaders will be nothing.
13Thorns will grow in its palaces, nettles and thistles in its fortresses. It will become a home for jackals, a courtyard for ostriches.
14Wild animals of the desert will meet with wolves, and wild goats will call to each other. The night creatures will settle there and find a resting place.
15The arrow snake will make its nest there, lay eggs, hatch them, and gather its young under its shade. Yes, kites will gather there, each with its mate.
16Search in the book of Yahweh, and read: not one of these will be missing. None will lack her mate. For my mouth has commanded it, and his Spirit has gathered them.
17He has cast lots for them, and his hand has divided the land among them with a measuring line. They will own it forever. From generation to generation, they will live in it.