Isaiah 34:8The MessageIt’s God’s scheduled time for vengeance, the year all Zion’s accounts are settled. Edom’s streams will flow sluggish, thick with pollution, the soil sterile, poisoned with waste, The whole country a smoking, stinking garbage dump— The fires burning day and night, the skies black with endless smoke. Generation after generation of wasteland— no more travelers through this country! Vultures and skunks will police the streets; owls and crows will feel at home there. God will reverse creation. Chaos! He will cancel fertility. Emptiness! Leaders will have no one to lead. They’ll name it No Kingdom There, A country where all kings and princes are unemployed. Thistles will take over, covering the castles, fortresses conquered by weeds and thornbushes. Wild dogs will prowl the ruins, ostriches have the run of the place. Wildcats and hyenas will hunt together, demons and devils dance through the night. The night-demon Lilith, evil and rapacious, will establish permanent quarters. Scavenging carrion birds will breed and brood, infestations of ominous evil. See the chapter |
24 Cross References
“Watch now. God’s Judgment Day comes. Cruel it is, a day of wrath and anger, A day to waste the earth and clean out all the sinners. The stars in the sky, the great parade of constellations, will be nothing but black holes. The sun will come up as a black disk, and the moon a blank nothing. I’ll put a full stop to the evil on earth, terminate the dark acts of the wicked. I’ll gag all braggarts and boasters—not a peep anymore from them— and trip strutting tyrants, leave them flat on their faces. Proud humanity will disappear from the earth. I’ll make mortals rarer than hens’ teeth. And yes, I’ll even make the sky shake, and the earth quake to its roots Under the wrath of God-of-the-Angel-Armies, the Judgment Day of his raging anger. Like a hunted white-tailed deer, like lost sheep with no shepherd, People will huddle with a few of their own kind, run off to some makeshift shelter. But tough luck to stragglers—they’ll be killed on the spot, throats cut, bellies ripped open, Babies smashed on the rocks while mothers and fathers watch, Houses looted, wives raped.
“But it’s not your day. It’s the Master’s, me, God-of-the-Angel-Armies— the day when I have it out with my enemies, The day when Sword puts an end to my enemies, when Sword exacts vengeance. I, the Master, God-of-the-Angel-Armies, will pile them on an altar—a huge sacrifice!— In the great north country, along the mighty Euphrates.
Time’s up. Doom’s at the doorstep. It’s payday! Did Israel bluster, “The prophet is crazy! The ‘man of the Spirit’ is nuts!”? Think again. Because of your great guilt, you’re in big trouble. The prophet is looking out for Ephraim, working under God’s orders. But everyone is trying to trip him up. He’s hated right in God’s house, of all places. The people are going from bad to worse, rivaling that ancient and unspeakable crime at Gibeah. God’s keeping track of their guilt. He’ll make them pay for their sins.
“As for you, Tyre and Sidon and Philistia, why should I bother with you? Are you trying to get back at me for something I did to you? If you are, forget it. I’ll see to it that it boomerangs on you. You robbed me, cleaned me out of silver and gold, carted off everything valuable to furnish your own temples. You sold the people of Judah and Jerusalem into slavery to the Greeks in faraway places. But I’m going to reverse your crime. I’m going to free those slaves. I’ll have done to you what you did to them: I’ll sell your children as slaves to your neighbors, And they’ll sell them to the far-off Sabeans.” God’s Verdict. * * *
You’re not getting by with anything. Every refusal and avoidance of God adds fuel to the fire. The day is coming when it’s going to blaze hot and high, God’s fiery and righteous judgment. Make no mistake: In the end you get what’s coming to you—Real Life for those who work on God’s side, but to those who insist on getting their own way and take the path of least resistance, Fire!
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