Yesaya 34:2-8

34:2 For the Lord is angry at all the nations

and furious with all their armies.

He will annihilate them and slaughter them.

34:3 Their slain will be left unburied, ¹ 

their corpses will stink; ² 

the hills will soak up their blood. ³ 

34:4 All the stars in the sky will fade away, ⁴ 

the sky will roll up like a scroll;

all its stars will wither,

like a leaf withers and falls from a vine

or a fig withers and falls from a tree. ⁵ 

34:5 He says, ⁶  “Indeed, my sword has slaughtered heavenly powers. ⁷ 

Look, it now descends on Edom, ⁸ 

on the people I will annihilate in judgment.”

34:6 The Lord’s sword is dripping with blood,

it is covered ⁹  with fat;

it drips ¹⁰  with the blood of young rams and goats

and is covered ¹¹  with the fat of rams’ kidneys.

For the Lord is holding a sacrifice ¹²  in Bozrah, ¹³ 

a bloody ¹⁴  slaughter in the land of Edom.

34:7 Wild oxen will be slaughtered ¹⁵  along with them,

as well as strong bulls. ¹⁶ 

Their land is drenched with blood,

their soil is covered with fat.

34:8 For the Lord has planned a day of revenge, ¹⁷ 

a time when he will repay Edom for her hostility toward Zion. ¹⁸ 

Yoel 1:15

1:15 How awful that day will be! ¹⁹ 

For the day of the Lord is near;

it will come as destruction from the Divine Destroyer. ²⁰ 

Zefanya 1:7

1:7 Be silent before the Lord God, ²¹ 

for the Lord’s day of judgment ²²  is almost here. ²³ 

The Lord has prepared a sacrificial meal; ²⁴ 

he has ritually purified ²⁵  his guests.

[34:3]  ¹ tn Heb “will be cast aside”; NASB, NIV “thrown out.”

[34:3]  ² tn Heb “[as for] their corpses, their stench will arise.”

[34:3]  ³ tn Heb “hills will dissolve from their blood.”

[34:4]  ⁴ tc Heb “and all the host of heaven will rot.” The Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a inserts “and the valleys will be split open,” but this reading may be influenced by Mic 1:4. On the other hand, the statement, if original, could have been omitted by homoioarcton, a scribe’s eye jumping from the conjunction prefixed to “the valleys” to the conjunction prefixed to the verb “rot.”

[34:4]  ⁵ tn Heb “like the withering of a leaf from a vine, and like the withering from a fig tree.”

[34:5]  ⁶ tn The words “he says” are supplied in the translation for clarification. The Lord speaks at this point.

[34:5]  ⁷ tn Heb “indeed [or “for”] my sword is drenched in the heavens.” The Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a has תראה (“[my sword] appeared [in the heavens]”), but this is apparently an attempt to make sense out of a difficult metaphor. Cf. NIV “My sword has drunk its fill in the heavens.”

[34:5]  sn In v. 4 the “host of the heaven” refers to the heavenly luminaries (stars and planets, see, among others, Deut 4:19; 17:3; 2 Kgs 17:16; 21:3, 5; 23:4-5; 2 Chr 33:3, 5) that populate the divine/heavenly assembly in mythological and prescientific Israelite thought (see Job 38:7; Isa 14:13). As in 24:21, they are viewed here as opposing God and being defeated in battle.

[34:5]  ⁸ sn Edom is mentioned here as epitomizing the hostile nations that oppose God.

[34:6]  ⁹ tn The verb is a rare Hotpaal passive form. See GKC 150 §54.h.

[34:6]  ¹⁰ tn The words “it drips” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[34:6]  ¹¹ tn The words “and is covered” are supplied in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[34:6]  ¹² tn Heb “for there is a sacrifice to the Lord.”

[34:6]  ¹³ sn The Lord’s judgment of Edom is compared to a bloody sacrificial scene.

[34:6]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “great” (so KJV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV).

[34:7]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “will go down”; NAB “shall be struck down.”

[34:7]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “and bulls along with strong ones.” Perhaps this refers to the leaders.

[34:8]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “for a day of vengeance [is] for the Lord.”

[34:8]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “a year of repayment for the strife of Zion.” The translation assumes that רִיב (riv) refers to Edom’s hostility toward Zion. Another option is to understand רִיב (riv) as referring to the Lord’s taking up Zion’s cause. In this case one might translate, “a time when he will repay Edom and vindicate Zion.”

[1:15]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “Alas for the day!”

[1:15]  ²⁰ tn There is a wordplay in Hebrew here with the word used for “destruction” (שׁוֹד, shod) and the term used for God (שַׁדַּי, shadday). The exact meaning of “Shaddai” in the OT is somewhat uncertain, although the ancient versions and many modern English versions tend to translate it as “Almighty” (e.g., Greek παντοκράτωρ [pantokratwr], Latin omnipotens). Here it might be rendered “Destroyer,” with the thought being that “destruction will come from the Divine Destroyer,” which should not be misunderstood as a reference to the destroying angel. The name “Shaddai” (outside Genesis and without the element “El” [“God”]) is normally used when God is viewed as the sovereign king who blesses/protects or curses/brings judgment. The name appears in the introduction to two of Balaam’s oracles (Num 24:4, 16) of blessing upon Israel. Naomi employs the name when accusing the Lord of treating her bitterly by taking the lives of her husband and sons (Ruth 1:20-21). In Ps 68:14, Isa 13:6, and the present passage, Shaddai judges his enemies through warfare, while Ps 91:1 depicts him as the protector of his people. In Ezek 1:24 and 10:5 the sound of the cherubs’ wings is compared to Shaddai’s powerful voice. The reference may be to the mighty divine warrior’s battle cry which accompanies his angry judgment.

[1:7]  ²¹ tn Heb “Lord Lord.” The phrase אֲדֹנָי יְהוִה (adonai yÿhvih) is customarily rendered by Jewish tradition as “Lord God.”

[1:7]  ²² tn Heb “the day of the Lord.”

[1:7]  sn The origin of the concept of “the day of the Lord” is uncertain. It may have originated in the ancient Near Eastern idea of the sovereign’s day of conquest, where a king would boast that he had concluded an entire military campaign in a single day (see D. Stuart, “The Sovereign’s Day of Conquest,” BASOR 221 [1976]: 159-64). In the OT the expression is applied to several acts of divine judgment, some historical and others still future (see A. J. Everson, “The Days of Yahweh,” JBL 93 [1974]: 329-37). In the OT the phrase first appears in Amos (assuming that Amos predates Joel and Obadiah), where it seems to refer to a belief on the part of the northern kingdom that God would intervene on Israel’s behalf and judge the nation’s enemies. Amos affirms that the Lord’s day of judgment is indeed approaching, but he declares that it will be a day of disaster, not deliverance, for Israel. Here in Zephaniah, the “day of the Lord” includes God’s coming judgment of Judah, as well as a more universal outpouring of divine anger.

[1:7]  ²³ tn Or “near.”

[1:7]  ²⁴ tn Heb “a sacrifice.” This same word also occurs in the following verse.

[1:7]  sn Because a sacrificial meal presupposes the slaughter of animals, it is used here as a metaphor of the bloody judgment to come.

[1:7]  ²⁵ tn Or “consecrated” (ASV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV).