Глава 34

1–4. Judgment on the universe. 5–17. Judgment of Edom. Preliminary note. Chapters 34 and 35 form the conclusion to the first part of Isaiah’s prophecy, combining the essential features of the predictions of this part about the times of judgment and salvation. The Prophet speaks in the 34th chapter. about the end of the world, but puts the picture of this final catastrophe in images taken from the events of his time, so that the last general judgment over the universe takes on the character of a judgment over a certain piece of land (Idumea). In the 35th chapter, the prophet shows us the other side of the judgment of the world - namely, the final redemption of Israel and its return from a foreign country to its homeland. Isa.34:1. Come, peoples, listen and listen, tribes! may the earth and everything that fills it, the universe and everything born in it, hear! All nations must listen to the prophecy about the judgment that will one day take place over the universe. These nations will be subjected to complete destruction, and even the sky itself will suffer from the fire of this terrible judgment. The prophet's appeal to the nations and everything that is on earth is reminiscent of his words in ch. 1st Art. 2nd and indicates the particular importance of the following speech. Isa.34:2. For the wrath of the Lord is against all nations, and His wrath is against all their armies. He consigned them to the curse, gave them to slaughter. Here, only humanity is named as the subject of God’s judgment. Unreasonable nature is already following man. “Their army” is not troops in the strict sense of the word, but crowds, masses of people (cf. Art. 4). “The curse” - see Is.11:15. Isa.34:3. And their slain will be scattered, and a stench will rise from their corpses, and the mountains will be soaked with their blood. Here we find hyperbolic expressions, and the very slaughter of sinful people, of course, should be recognized only as a metaphor. Isa.34:4. And all the heavenly host will decay; and the heavens will be rolled up like a book scroll; and all their army shall fall as a leaf falls from the vine, and as a withered leaf from the fig tree. The “heavenly host” or stars decays like paper or material smoldering from the heat of fire. "The skies will roll up". Sky - in Hebrew. rakiaf is, in fact, a huge space. This space will become small, curled up from the same drying effect of fire, just as paper curls into a tube from heat. "Their army will fall." The prophet, obviously, again refers to the effect of a flame, which dries up, for example, a tree and causes leaves to fall from it. Why does the prophet also speak about the judgment of the luminaries? This can be explained by the belief of the ancients that the luminaries have a great influence on the lives of people and, therefore, are partly responsible for all their crimes. Isaiah 34:5–17. From heaven, the judgment of the Lord passes again to earth and falls on Edom as the country most hostile to the Jewish state. The inhabitants of this country will be destroyed and the entire region of Edom will undergo terrible devastation. Isa.34:5. For My sword is drunk in heaven: behold, it comes down for judgment on Edom and on the people whom I have given over to the curse. Isa.34:6. The sword of the Lord shall be filled with blood, made fat with fat, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams: for the sacrifice of the Lord is in Bozrah, and the great slaughter in the land of Edom. Isa.34:7. And the buffaloes shall fall with them, and the bulls with the oxen, and the land shall be drunk with their blood, and their ashes shall be fattened with fatness. Isa.34:8. For the day of vengeance is with the Lord, the year of retribution for Zion. Wanting to show the inevitability of God's judgments, the prophet depicts these judgments under the guise of a sword, beating children without rest. The prophet represents the Edomites under the guise of lambs, goats and rams, buffaloes, calves and oxen being slaughtered, wanting to show by this that all classes of people in Idumea will be subjected to the destructive action of God’s judgment (buffaloes and calves are the most prominent representatives of Idumea). Bozor is the main city of Idumea. "A day... of torment, a year of retribution." Both of these expressions indicate that the time has finally come when Edom must suffer for all the wrongs that it has caused to the Jews. And this people, who lived on high rocks, where they could hide after their raids on Judea, caused many such insults. Saint John Chrysostom warns here that God is not angry like people, but acts quite justly. Isa.34:9. And its rivers shall be turned into pitch, and its dust into brimstone, and its land shall be burning pitch: Isa.34:10. will not go out day or night; its smoke will rise forever; it will remain desolate from generation to generation; forever and ever no one will pass over it; Isa.34:11. and the pelican and the hedgehog will take possession of it; and the owl and the raven will dwell in it; and they will stretch along it a rope of ruin and a plumb line of destruction. Depicting the future desolation of Idumea, the prophet used the information that the Jews had about this country at that time. Exactly from the book. Genesis they knew about the fate that had once befallen the country neighboring Idumea (Gen. 19), about the destruction of Sodom, Gomorrah and other cities of the valley located south of the Dead Sea. The Jews knew that Idumea was also rich in extinct volcanoes, and the prophet here quite clearly tells his compatriots that these volcanoes will eventually open again and flood the entire country with their lava, and this lava, with a sulfuric smell, will penetrate the beds of the Idumean rivers. It is clear that no one will want to live in such a suffocating atmosphere, and perhaps only some desert birds and hedgehogs will find refuge there. “Pelican” is actually a water bird; therefore, here it is better to understand the word kaat as an expression meaning owl. 44 “Hedgehog” is a common desert inhabitant; “Owls and Crows” - the same. "Rope of Ruin". Wanting to show that Idumea will never escape its sad fate, the prophet says that a rope or twine will be stretched along it, which builders usually used when constructing new buildings and when destroying a number of houses in cities. Nothing, therefore, in Idumea will be saved from destruction and extermination. The Lord will accurately mark all the borders of the country over which devastation should spread. Isa.34:12. None of her nobles will remain there who could be called to the kingdom, and all her princes will be nothing. Isa.34:13. And her palaces will be overgrown with thorny plants, nettles and thistles - her strongholds; and it will be the home of jackals, the haven of ostriches. Isa.34:14. And the beasts of the desert will meet with wild cats, and the goblin will call to each other; there the night ghost will rest and find peace. Isa.34:15. A flying serpent will nest there, lay eggs and hatch children and gather them under its shade; there the kites will gather one to another. There will be no aristocrats left in Idumea, the true descendants of Esau, from among whom the kings in Idumea were chosen. The royal power there was not hereditary, and the other aristocrats who remained in it would lose all significance (“they will be nothing”). Naturally, the Edomite palaces, deprived of their owners, will be overgrown with weeds and only unclean birds and animals will live in their ruins. In addition, unclean spirits will also settle here. “Jackals..., ostriches..., beasts..., wild cats..., goblins...” - the prophet spoke about all this in his speech about the destruction of Babylon (see Is. 13:21, 22). “Night Ghost” – from Hebrew. Lilith. Ancient interpreters saw here a hint of the Jewish belief in a female demon who sucks blood from people at night, but new ones translate this word, which comes from the word lail - night, simply with the expression: nocturnal, and here they mean a nocturnal bird, i.e. an eagle owl. A “flying snake” is a snake that from somewhere from a height, for example, from a tall tree, rushes at its victim and stings it from the air. “Kites” love deserted, secluded places, and it would be best for them to raise their chicks in the ruins of Idumean palaces. Isa.34:16. Find it in the book of the Lord and read it; none of these will fail to come, and one will not be replaced by the other. For His very mouth has commanded, and His very Spirit will gather them. Isa.34:17. And He Himself cast lots for them, and His hand divided it for them by measure; They will possess it forever, and they will live on it from generation to generation. Since the wicked Edomites, upon whom the wrath of God will fall, can attribute all their misfortunes to simple chance, the prophet indicates in advance to future readers of his book the opportunity to be convinced that the judgment that will break out over Idumea will be the work of God. To do this, you only need to carefully read what was said about Idumea in the book of the Lord, that is, in the first part of the book of the prophet Isaiah, which the prophet, in his conviction of the divine origin of the revelations communicated to him and transmitted in this part, boldly calls the book of the Lord Himself! The Lord, who commanded the desert animals and birds to occupy the Edomite palaces, will Himself gather them and will never take away from them the possession given to them. Criticism raises serious objections to the authenticity of chapters 34 and the next 35, but still these objections are not binding. They say precisely that the hatred of Edom, which permeates chapter 34, already presupposes the participation of the Edomites in the destruction of Jerusalem under Nebuchadnezzar (cf. Pl.4:21-22). But to this it must be said that prophets more ancient than Isaiah also proclaimed the wrath of God to the Edomites for their enmity towards the Jews (Am.1:11; Am.9:12; Joel.3:19). They point out that chapter 35 presupposes the already accomplished withdrawal of the Jews to Babylon, if the prophet there directly speaks of the return of the Jews to their fatherland. But a similar prophecy already exists in Isaiah in ch. Isaiah 29:22–23 and Isaiah 30:29. Chapter 34 is divided into stanzas as follows: 1 stanza – 1–4 art. – (3, 2, 2) 2 stanza – 5–7 art. – (3, 2, 2) Stanza 3 – 8–17 art. – (3, 2, 2, 2; 2, 2, 2, 3) In the Slavic translation from LXX-i - “a lot of birds and hedgehogs”. Note ed. You might be interested in: