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Isaiah

About this book
Chapter 34

1 Come near, you nations, and listen! Pay attention, you people! The earth and everything it contains must listen, the world and everything that lives in it. 2 For the Lord is angry at all the nations and furious with all their armies. He will annihilate them and slaughter them. 3 Their slain will be left unburied, their corpses will stink; the hills will soak up their blood. 4 All the stars in the sky will fade away,⁠ 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 He says, “Indeed, my sword has slaughtered heavenly powers. Look, it now descends on Edom, on the people I will annihilate in judgment.” 6 The Lord’s sword is dripping with blood, it is covered with fat; it drips with the blood of young rams and goats and is covered with the fat of rams’ kidneys. For the Lord is holding a sacrifice in Bozrah,⁠ a bloody slaughter in the land of Edom.⁠ 7 Wild oxen will be slaughtered along with them, as well as strong bulls. Their land is drenched with blood, their soil is covered with fat. 8 For the Lord has planned a day of revenge, a time when he will repay Edom for her hostility toward Zion.⁠ 9 Edom’s streams will be turned into pitch⁠ and her soil into brimstone; her land will become burning pitch. 10 Night and day it will burn; its smoke will ascend continually.⁠ Generation after generation it will be a wasteland, and no one will ever pass through it again.⁠ 11 Owls and wild animals will live there, all kinds of wild birds will settle in it.⁠ The Lord will stretch out over her the measuring line of ruin and the plumb line of destruction. 12 Her nobles will have nothing left to call a kingdom, and all her officials will disappear. 13 Her fortresses will be overgrown with thorns; thickets and weeds will grow in her fortified cities. Jackals will settle there; ostriches will live there. 14 Wild animals and wild dogs will congregate there; wild goats will bleat to one another.⁠ Yes, nocturnal animals will rest there and make for themselves a nest. 15 Owls will make nests and lay eggs there; they will hatch them and protect them. Yes, hawks will gather there, each with its mate. 16 Carefully read the scroll of the Lord! Not one of these creatures will be missing, none will lack a mate. For the Lord has issued the decree, and his own Spirit gathers them. 17 He assigns them their allotment; he measures out their assigned place. They will live there permanently; they will settle in it through successive generations.

Texts in conversation

Compare Isaiah 34:11 and LXX Isaiah 34:11

Hebrew Bible · Septuagint

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Summary

Isaiah 34 describes a cursed wasteland, with the Hebrew referencing wild birds and animals. The Greek Septuagint inserts fantastical and mythological birds and also adds a reference to a “donkey centaur” which may also be translated as “goat demon.”

Passages

Isaiah 34:11

Hebrew Bible
10 Night and day it will burn; its smoke will ascend continually. Generation after generation it will be a wasteland, and no one will ever pass through it again. 11 Owls and wild animals will live there, all kinds of wild birds will settle in it. The Lord will stretch out over her the measuring line of ruin and the plumb line of destruction. 12 Her nobles will have nothing left to call a kingdom, and all her officials will disappear.
740–450 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Isaiah

LXX Isaiah 34:11

Septuagint
10 night and day; and it shall never be quenched, and her smoke shall go up: it shall be made desolate throughout her generations, and for a long time; 11 and birds and hedgehogs, and ibises and ravens shall dwell in it: and the measuring line of desolation shall be cast over it, and donkey-centaurs shall dwell in it. 12 Her princes shall be no more; for her kings and her princes and her great men shall be destroyed.
100–1 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in LXX Isaiah

References

"... The Septuagint of Isaiah has a minus in 24:10. In place of Hebrewּ ("the desolate town is destroyed"), the Greek reads ("every town is deserted"). Tov marks תֹהוּ as the minus. While there is no precedent for a שָׁבַר // ἐρημόω equivalent, the Isaiah translator uses ἔρημος as an equivalent for תֹהוּ in 34:11. This suggests that the minus pertains to נִשְׁבָּה. In either case, the translator has condensed the Hebrew phrase. There is also a significant transformation in 34:11 ... Tov suggests the Hebrew has been condensed into a single phrase, while καὶ οἰκοπετοῦνται οἰκήσουσιν ἐν αὐτῇ appears as a plus .. Isaiah 24:10 and 34:11 ... Alternatively, the translator has rendered only the first part of the Hebrew phrase accurately and, for whatever reason, rendered the second with καὶ οἰκοπετοῦνται οἰκήσουσιν ἐν αὐτῇ. Ottley notes these two possibilities and suggests the former option might be an addition from Isaiah 13:22 ..."
Aaron C. Fenlason, “Translation Technique and the Intertextuality of Creation in LXX Isaiah 40–55” (PhD diss., Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2022), 113.
"... while one might expect a clear distinction between the mythical and the unclean, several non-pentateuchal texts associate them quite closely. Overlap appears most prominently in Isa 34:11–14, where both wild and mythical birds or creatures comprise the list of various ruin dwellers: hawk, owl, Lilith, and possibly “goat demon.” The importance of hybridity as a conception for the “demonic” or for “evil” or just for the “powers beyond the human world” may provide some insight into the conceptual distinctions between “clean/unclean” or “shunned/welcomed” in the legal texts. Houston makes this connection explicit ..."
Peter Altmann, Banned Birds: The Birds of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019), 44.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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