1 Draw near, nations, and hear; peoples, pay attention! Let the earth and everything in it listen, the world and all that springs from it.
2 For the LORD's anger is against all the nations, and his rage against all their armies; he has devoted them to destruction, he has handed them over for slaughter.
3 Their slain will be flung out, the stench of their corpses will go up, and the mountains will dissolve with their blood.
4 The whole host of the heavens will rot away, and the heavens will roll up like a scroll; all their host will wither, as foliage withers from the vine, like shriveled fruit from the fig tree.
5 For my sword has drunk its fill in the heavens; see, it comes down upon Edom, upon the people I have devoted to destruction, for judgment.
6 The LORD has a sword; it is filled with blood, greasy with fat, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of rams' kidneys. For the LORD has a sacrifice in Bozrah, a vast slaughter in the land of Edom.
7 Wild oxen will go down along with them, young bulls together with mighty bulls; their land will drink its fill of blood, and their dust will be fattened with fat.
8 For the LORD has a day of vengeance, a year of repayment for Zion's cause.
9 Its torrents will be changed into pitch, its dust into sulfur, and its land will turn into burning pitch.
10 Night and day it will not go out; its smoke will rise forever. Generation after generation it will lie desolate; for ages upon ages no one will pass through it.
11 The pelican and the hedgehog will take it over, the owl and the raven will make their home in it. He will stretch over it the measuring line of chaos and the plumb stones of emptiness.
12 As for its nobles, nothing will be left there for them to call a kingdom, and all its princes will come to nothing.
13 Thorns will spring up in its fortified palaces, nettles and brambles in its strongholds; it will become a lair for jackals, a home for ostriches.
14 Desert creatures will meet up with hyenas, and the wild goat will call out to its companion; there too the night creature will settle down and find itself a place to rest.
15 There the owl will build her nest, lay her eggs, hatch them and gather her brood under her shade; there too the kites will flock together, each with its mate.
16 Look in the book of the LORD and read: not one of these will be lacking, not one will be without her mate. For my mouth has given the command, and his Spirit has gathered them.
17 He himself has cast the lot for them, and his hand has divided it out to them by the line. They will hold it as their own forever; generation after generation they will live in it.