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Isaiah 34:3-5
New English Translation
Isaiah 34:3-5
New English Translation
3 Their slain will be left unburied,[a]
their corpses will stink;[b]
the hills will soak up their blood.[c]
4 All the stars in the sky will fade away,[d]
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.[e]
5 He says,[f] “Indeed, my sword has slaughtered heavenly powers.[g]
Look, it now descends on Edom,[h]
on the people I will annihilate in judgment.”
Footnotes
- Isaiah 34:3 tn Heb “will be cast aside”; NASB, NIV “thrown out.”
- Isaiah 34:3 tn Heb “[as for] their corpses, their stench will arise.”
- Isaiah 34:3 tn Heb “hills will dissolve from their blood.”
- Isaiah 34:4 tc Heb “and all the host of heaven will rot.” The Qumran scroll 1QIsaa 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.”
- Isaiah 34:4 tn Heb “like the withering of a leaf from a vine, and like the withering from a fig tree.”
- Isaiah 34:5 tn The words “he says” are supplied in the translation for clarification. The Lord speaks at this point.
- Isaiah 34:5 tn Heb “indeed [or “for”] my sword is drenched in the heavens.” The Qumran scroll 1QIsaa 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.”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.
- Isaiah 34:5 sn Edom is mentioned here as epitomizing the hostile nations that oppose God.
Isaiah 34:3-5
New International Version
Isaiah 34:3-5
New International Version
3 Their slain(A) will be thrown out,
their dead bodies(B) will stink;(C)
the mountains will be soaked with their blood.(D)
4 All the stars in the sky will be dissolved(E)
and the heavens rolled up(F) like a scroll;
all the starry host will fall(G)
like withered(H) leaves from the vine,
like shriveled figs from the fig tree.
New English Translation (NET)
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New International Version (NIV) 
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