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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 34:4 and Gospel of Thomas 111

Hebrew Bible · Nag Hammadi

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Summary

In Isaiah, the sky rolls up like a scroll during judgment. Jesus uses a similar image in the Gospel of Thomas to promise that the living will outlast heaven and earth.

Passages

Isaiah 34:4

Hebrew Bible
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.”
740–450 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Isaiah

Gospel of Thomas 111

Nag Hammadi
110 Jesus said, “Whoever has found the world and become rich should renounce the world.” 111 Jesus said, “The heavens and the earth will roll up in your presence, and the Living One from the Living One will not see death.” Does not Jesus say, “Whoever has found himself, of him the world is not worthy”? 112 Jesus said, “Woe to the flesh that depends on the soul; woe to the soul that depends on the flesh.”
135–200 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in the Gospel of Thomas

References

“... ‘The heavens and the earth’ correspond to the cosmos or world in GTh 111.3. The muted character of eschatology in Thomas comes out here: of terms which can be used to depict the disintegration of the cosmos, ‘roll up’, like ‘pass away’ in GTh 11, is one of the least violent. The image of the rolling is probably the rolling up of a scroll (Isa. 34.4; Rev. 6.14) or perhaps a garment (Heb. 1.12). The emphasis is on the impermanence of the cosmos by contrast with the immutability of the living sphere. ...”
Simon Gathercole, The Gospel of Thomas: Introduction and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 598–599.

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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Isaiah 34:4 and Gospel of Thomas 111

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