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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 KTU 1.3 II:27 and Isaiah 34:6

Ancient Near East, Ugaritic · Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Isaiah 34 shares the Baal Cycle's picture of Anat's battle as a feast, turning the slaughter of Edom into a sacrifice that exposes God's judgment on an enemy nation.

Passages

KTU 1.3 II:27

Ancient Near East, Ugaritic · Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
but she was not sated with her fighting in the vale, her battling between the two cities. She arranged chairs for the warriors, she did arrange tables for the soldiers, stools for the heroes. Anat fought hard and looked, she battled and surveyed the scene; her liver swelled with laughter, her heart was filled with joy, the liver of Anat with triumph, as she plunged her knees in the blood of the guards, her skirts in the gore of the warriors, until she was sated with fighting in the house, with battling between the tables. The blood of the guards was wiped from the house
1350–1185 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in KTU

Isaiah 34:6

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

References

“... Third, the battle produces heaps of corpses (Isa. 34:2) or skulls (Deut. 32:43; Ps. 110:6). The image of harvest appears in Anat’s “gleaning” and in some biblical scenes of divine war (Joel 3:13; Rev. 14:14-20; cf. secular examples in Judg. 8:1-2; 20:44-46; Jer. 6:9; cf. Jer. 49:9; Obadiah 5). Fourth, like the second part of the Ugaritic passage given above, the aftermath of war is described as a feast, a feature attested in Isaiah 34:6-7, 49:26 and perhaps presupposed in the sacrificial language of Deuteronomy 32:43. This feast includes feeding on the flesh of captives (Deut. 32:42), drinking the blood of the victims (Isa. 49:26; LXX Zech. 9:15; cf. Num. 23:24), called “captives” in Deuteronomy 32:42 (as in KTU 1.3 II), and wading in the blood of the vanquished (Pss. 58:11; 68:24). Isaiah 49:26 alters the motif of feeding on the captives. In this verse, the enemies will cannibalize themselves: “I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh, and they shall be drunk with their own blood as with wine.” The image of wading in the blood may be related to the theme of the battle as bloody harvest. Because of its blood red color, the image of the wine harvest appears in biblical descriptions of divine war (Deut. 32:42-43; Isa. 49:26; 63:3; Ezek. 39:19; Joel 4:13; Lam. 1:15; Rev. 19:15). ...”
Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel, 2nd ed., The Biblical Resource Series (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), PDF 116.

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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KTU 1.3 II:27 and Isaiah 34:6

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