And the pelican and the bittern shall possess it, and the great owl and the raven shall dwell in it. And he shall stretch out upon it the line of waste, and the plummets of emptiness.
Isaiah 34 announces God's judgment on Edom, and verse 11 shows the result: a land left to wild birds, then measured out with builder's tools that mark only chaos and emptiness. Two questions follow — why Edom, and what those tools mean.
The ruin of one small nation sits inside a far bigger picture.
This is one of the darkest chapters in the Bible. It describes a worldwide judgment such as the world has never seen. The Lord's anger then rests on all nations and on their armies.
Why Edom? The answer reaches back a long way.
In the last book of the Old Testament we find God saying that He hated Esau, and one of the shorter prophetic books, Obadiah, deals entirely with predictions against him. We find the same thing here. Verse 8 tells us that vengeance falls on them in payment for "the controversy of Zion." In Zion God chose to have mercy on Jacob, while Edom pursued them with undying hatred, as we see in Psalm 83:3-6. So judgments of unusual severity will fall on the land of Edom, and the rest of chapter 34 gives us the solemn details.
The creatures named here are hard to identify, and translations differ. What they signal is not in doubt.
In the Greek Old Testament the word means "hedgehog or porcupine," and some Hebrew scholars prefer that meaning for the Hebrew word qippod. But two of the passages name it alongside a bird called the Cormorant, so it is more likely a bird... These passages point to desolation caused by the judgements of God. The bittern is a bird that keeps away from company, and it is at home in any deserted marshy place... People have long treated its sad cry as a sign of coming evil.
The same picture returns over a ruined city, where the birds mean more than scenery.
"A hold of every unclean and hated bird." We gather that the demons and unclean spirits spoken of in that passage are personal beings. The unclean birds, birds of prey and of darkness, stand for the many and varied agents of Satan (Matthew 13:4, 32; Jeremiah 5:27; above all Isaiah 34:11-15), and they are of a deeply harmful and destructive kind. So Babylon is a sink of corruption, a thing God detests.
A measuring line and a plumb line are building tools. Here they serve for pulling down, and the point is accuracy.
A simple device: a lump of lead, a stone, or some other weight tied to a string, used to test whether a building or other structure stands upright. It pictures the exactness with which God brought judgement on Israel. God had built Israel up as a wall built with a plumb line, and with a plumb line it would be pulled down.
The words for confusion and emptiness here, tohu and bohu, are the same pair used of the earth in Genesis 1:2. Edom shows what kind of state those words describe.
No one can say that this describes the original state of the land of Edom. It is a state that God's judgment brought it down to. This confirms the meaning already given to Genesis 1:2... the way these words are used elsewhere (as in Isaiah 34) shows that there they fit a state God brought upon what He had made. They certainly do not describe the state in which He made or created it.
Edom's name itself carries a lesson.
Edom is the same name as Adam, only slightly disguised. The nation therefore stands for the flesh, and "Those who are in the flesh cannot please God." The flesh can appear in many convincing forms, pleasing to the natural senses and appealing to minds that reason everything out.
This wasteland is not the last word. The next chapter sets a garden beside the ruin.
Set strikingly beside this terrible picture of a vast emptiness with no room for man — a land left, as it were, to wild beasts, birds of prey and reptiles — God shows that the day which sees this desolation for Edom begins Israel's blessing. And it is not only Israel rejoicing: the Lord will make a wide and growing scene for His own glory where once there was misery and barrenness.
- Cause — God judges Edom for its long hatred of Zion, the city where He chose to show mercy to Jacob.
- Measure — The line and plumb line are building tools used for pulling down. God's judgment is exact, not random.
- Result — Tohu and bohu describe a state God's judgment brought the land down to, never the state in which He made it.
- Reach — The birds of prey and darkness stand for Satan's agents. The same picture returns over fallen Babylon.
- Reversal — The very day that empties Edom begins Israel's blessing and fills the waste with God's glory.
Of her nobles who should proclaim the kingdom, none are there; and all her princes shall be nought.
Isaiah 34 describes God's judgment on Edom, and verse 12 fixes on one detail: the thrones stand empty. No noble is left to proclaim a kingdom, and every prince comes to nothing. Why this nation, and why so complete an end?
Edom is the named target here. But the judgment reaches far wider than one small kingdom, and it falls on the nations that have crushed Zion.
Isaiah 34 reveals the terrible judgments that will fall on the other nations in Edom (compare Isaiah 63). Here it is those who have oppressed Zion, and the vengeance that God takes on oppressors. Edom itself is the particular object of this. But all the enemies of Israel who joined with Edom — the armies of the nations gathered against Jerusalem — will perish by the judgment of Jehovah in the land of Edom.
A kingdom with no one left to call it a kingdom is the exact reversal of what Edom wanted. God made Edom small, and Edom refused to be content with that.
They sought great things and hated the dignity of Israel. "Behold, I have made them small among the nations; you are greatly despised." This does not happen where a man or a people is content with the place given to them and fitting for them. It is especially the doom of those who aim beyond their measure. Then to be despised is of course particularly painful; and such was the history of Edom.
The loss is sharper when you remember what Edom had. Esau's line had rank and settled power long before Jacob's line had anything at all.
The world was Esau's portion, while Israel was still a stranger and a pilgrim. His children had their own chiefs and lands. They had kings too, and cities of their own. They were settled, as in the clefts of the rocks where eagles made their nests. All this time Jacob's children were still only homeless wanderers, in lands that were not theirs or in wasted deserts.
This judgment is not a reaction to one recent offence. When God acts, He looks back to where the story started.
With unerring wisdom God goes back to what Esau did from the beginning of his history. He had waited long and patiently, nearly a thousand years. Now He shows His perfect knowledge of the whole course and the end. But when the end does come, God always traces everything back to the beginning.
The same method fits a believer's own failures. Look past the visible fault to the cause behind it.
We never get right by merely judging this or that outbreak, but should always search out the cause... It is not enough to judge our acts; judging self is a very different process. We need to discern the springs within ourselves.
The prophets promise other condemned nations that God will restore them one day. Edom gets no such promise, and that silence is deliberate.
Obadiah 5, 6, 9, 18 and Jeremiah 49:9-10, 22 also declare that none of Edom shall be left. Notice that there is no restoration of a remnant, as there is for Elam and others (Jeremiah 49:39)... We see in these chapters, and in Isaiah 63, that Jehovah takes up Jerusalem's cause in His dispute with Edom.
One writer sees in Edom a picture of something nearer home. The name itself gives the hint.
Edom is really the same name as Adam, only slightly disguised. So the nation stands for the flesh, and "Those who are in the flesh cannot please God." The flesh can appear in many convincing forms. It pleases the natural senses and appeals to the reasoning minds of men. In our day the strong humanist movement is a clear example of this proud, empty, fleshly pretension. It will fall under the awesome judgment of God, while the despised people of God will be delivered.
- Pride. Edom refused the small place God gave it and aimed higher. That is why it ends up despised.
- Patience. God waited nearly a thousand years. Then He traced the judgment back to what Esau did at the start. He deals with roots, not outbreaks.
- Nothing. No noble is left to proclaim a kingdom. Every rank and title Edom held before Israel had a king comes to nothing.
- Finality. Elam and others get a remnant back. Edom does not, because God is pleading Jerusalem's cause.
- Application. Edom pictures the flesh. Proud, empty human pretension falls, and the despised people of God are delivered. So judge the spring within, not just the act.
And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in her fortresses; and it shall be a dwelling-place of wild dogs, a court for ostriches.
Isaiah 34 shows a land emptied of people and taken over by weeds and wild animals. Verse 13 is where the ruin reaches the buildings themselves. Why Edom? Is this ruin already history, or still ahead? And what is a scene of nettles and jackals meant to teach us?
The judgment named here lands on Edom — also called Idumea — but it reaches far wider.
Isaiah 34 reveals the terrible judgments which will fall upon the other nations in Edom (compare Isaiah 63). Here it is those who have oppressed Zion, and the vengeance that God takes on oppressors. Idumea itself is the particular object of this. But all the enemies of Israel who joined with Edom — the armies of the nations gathered against Jerusalem — will perish by the judgment of the Lord in the land of Edom.
The chapter is aimed at the line of Esau, and the reason lies far back.
In the last book of the Old Testament, God says that He hated Esau. One of the shorter prophetic books, Obadiah, is taken up entirely with predictions against him. Here we find the same thing. Verse 8 tells us that vengeance falls upon them in payment for "the controversy of Zion." In Zion God chose to have mercy upon Jacob, whereas Edom pursued them with undying hatred, as we see in Psalm 83:3-6. As a result, judgments of special severity will fall on the land of Idumea. The rest of chapter 34 gives us the solemn details.
When God finally acts, He looks back to where the evil started.
With unerring wisdom God goes back to what Esau did from the beginning of his history. He had waited long and patiently, nearly a thousand years. He shows His perfect knowledge of the whole course and its end. But when the end does come, God always traces everything back to the beginning.
Thorns and nettles are not scenery. Scripture uses them as a settled signal.
Scripture mentions these as a sign that a place was deserted and given up to desolation. The book of Job describes poor outcasts taking shelter under them.
The animals carry the same message. Older translations read "dragons" here, where newer ones read "jackals."
It may signify any great serpent or sea monster, symbolic of a huge destructive creature. Scripture says that nations doomed to destruction and desolation, including Jerusalem, become homes of dragons. Isaiah 34:13; Isaiah 35:7; Jeremiah 9:11; Jeremiah 10:22; Jeremiah 51:37.
The second creature is also debated. The Hebrew bath yaanah means "daughter of howling." Older translations render it "owl" eight times, including here, though the ostrich is probably meant. It is a bird "characterised by dwelling in waste places, and also by its wailing cry" (Morrish Bible Dictionary).
The thorns come up where the strength and splendour once stood. In verse 12 they call for the nobles, and no one is there. Kelly sums up the scene:
a terrible picture of vast emptiness where man once was, handed over, as it were, only to ravenous beasts and birds of prey and reptiles.
Edom nested high in the rocks, and some writers draw a lesson from that.
Mount Seir is the stronghold of the flesh, the fortress of godless man. But God would pull Edom down from his high nest (see Obadiah). At his end He would drive him from his high perch and bring him low. And so all proud thoughts and boastful strongholds of the flesh will be laid in the dust!
Edom today is a ruin. So some say the prophecy has already come true, and that its strongest words were only poetry. Grant answers that:
This is only saying that the language is that of poetic exaggeration. We utterly and absolutely deny it. The present condition of Edom is not what Isaiah prophesies of. He speaks of a time still future, as verses 2-8 clearly show. Then this terrible judgment will come true. If Scripture language were so deceptive, who could trust it?
The desolation is not the last word in Isaiah. The creatures of verse 13 come back in the next chapter, but everything is reversed. Where the jackals lay down, there will be grass, reeds and rushes (W. T. P. Wolston). Kelly points to the pairing. The same day that empties Edom opens Israel's blessing, and God "will form a large and enlarging scene for His own glory, where once there was misery and barrenness" (William Kelly).
- Cause. Edom hated Israel without letting up, and the chapter answers that. God waited nearly a thousand years, then traced the end back to Esau's beginning.
- Scale. Idumea is the particular target, but the nations gathered against Jerusalem fall there too.
- Sign. Thorns, nettles and jackals are Scripture's standard shorthand for a place deserted and given over to desolation.
- Reach. The weeds grow in palaces and fortresses. God pulls down the flesh at its strongest and lays it in the dust.
- Reversal. Commentators hold that this awaits a future day. Where the jackals lay down, the next chapter puts grass, reeds and rushes.
And there shall the beasts of the desert meet with the jackals, and the wild goat shall cry to his fellow; the lilith also shall settle there, and find for herself a place of rest.
Isaiah 34 announces the Lord's judgment on Edom, the nation descended from Esau. Verse 14 shows what is left once that judgment has done its work: no people, only creatures of the waste. The question the verse forces is whether this is poetry about ruin, a picture of demonic haunting, or both.
The chapter widens from Edom to the whole world, then narrows again to one land singled out for the sword. One writer sets the scene by pointing to the reason given in verse 8:
In the last book of the Old Testament we find God saying that He hated Esau, and one of the shorter prophets, Obadiah, is taken up entirely with predictions against him. We find the same thing here. Verse 8 tells us that vengeance falls on them in payment for "the cause of Zion." In Zion God chose to show mercy to Jacob, while Edom chased them with a hatred that never let up, as we see in Psalm 83:3-6. So judgments of special severity will fall on the land of Idumea (Edom), and the rest of chapter 34 gives us the solemn details.
One writer sets the whole scene in the future:
It has not been fulfilled up to now, but it will be fulfilled when "the LORD has a sacrifice in Bozrah, a great slaughter in the land of Edom" (verse 6) — that is, in the coming day of the Lord. Then comes the complete desolation of Edom (Isaiah 34:9-17).
The word behind "the wild goat" is sair, which older Bibles render "satyr". Its everyday sense is plain, but what it points to here is disputed:
The word is sair, which means 'hairy one,' and so 'a he-goat.' It is translated 'goat' and 'kid' many times. In Leviticus 17:7 and 2 Chronicles 11:15 it is translated 'devils,' but 'demons' would have been better. There it means the gods the nations worshipped without knowing it: compare 1 Corinthians 10:20. The word is translated 'satyr' in Isaiah 13:21 and Isaiah 34:14. Both passages speak of places brought to complete desolation. So either wild beasts, owls and possibly 'wild goats' are meant; or the desolation would be so great that men would avoid these places as if unearthly beings haunted them.
The last creature in the verse is harder still. A word found nowhere else in the Bible stands behind "the night bird":
There is also lilith, in Isaiah 34:14 only, translated 'screech owl' (the margin and the Revised Version have 'night-monster'). What it refers to is doubtful.
The same word carried an old belief about empty places:
Sair means 'rough, hairy,' and in particular a he-goat. From this comes "a goat-shaped deity, which people worshipped as an idol . . . . They believed that such hostile beings lived in the deserts and woods (Isaiah 13:21; Isaiah 34:14), and that they had to be appeased by divine worship".
In verse 11 God stretches over Edom "the line of confusion" and "the plumb line of emptiness". The two Hebrew words are tohu and bohu, the words used of the earth in Genesis 1:2. One writer builds an argument on that link:
No one can say that this describes the original state of the land of Edom. It is a condition to which God's judgment brought it down. This confirms the meaning already given to Genesis 1:2… the way the terms are used elsewhere (as in Isaiah 34) shows that there they fit a condition God assigned to what He had made. They do not describe the state in which He made or created it.
So the desert beasts, the wild goat and the night bird are squatters in a land that judgment emptied.
The next chapter turns the picture over:
Set strikingly beside this terrible picture of a vast waste empty of people, given over, as it were, only to hungry beasts, birds of prey and reptiles, God shows that the day which sees this desolation for Edom opens Israel's blessing. And it is not only Israel rejoicing: the LORD will make a large and growing scene for His own glory, where once there was misery and barrenness.
Writing on the fall of Babylon in Revelation 18, one commentator explains its unclean birds from this passage:
We gather that the demons and unclean spirits spoken of in our text are personal beings. The unclean birds, birds of prey and of darkness, stand for the many and varied agents of Satan (Matthew 13:4, 32; Jeremiah 5:27; especially Isaiah 34:11-15), agents of a deeply harmful and destructive kind.
- Cause — the judgment falls for "the cause of Zion". Edom chased Jacob with a hatred that never let up, and the sentence answers it.
- Condition — the desert beasts, the wild goat and the night bird do not show how the land was made. They show the state God's judgment brought it down to.
- Uncertainty — the words sair and lilith are disputed. They may mean real wild goats and an owl, or a place so ruined that men avoid it as haunted.
- Echo — Revelation borrows this scene of ruin for Babylon, where the unclean birds stand for the agents of Satan.
- Contrast — the same day that leaves Edom to the beasts opens Israel's blessing, and the LORD makes a growing scene for His own glory where there was misery.
There shall the arrow-snake make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather under her shadow; there also shall the vultures be gathered one with another.
Isaiah 34 pictures the land of Edom after God's judgment falls on it. Verse 15 shows the result. The ruins are not empty: nesting creatures and paired birds of prey settle where a proud nation once lived. Two questions follow. When does this happen, and why does God single out Edom?
Commentators read this scene as history still ahead, not as poetry about a past event. William Kelly warns that fitting it to the days of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar breaks either the text or the facts:
Keep in mind that this judgement is still future. If anyone applied it strictly and in full to the times of Nebuchadnezzar, confusion must result, twisting either Scripture or the facts. The opposite was seen then. The nations had it all their own way. The real fulfilment will be at the end of the age.
Kelly also points to travellers who crossed Idumea, the land of Edom, and lived to tell of it. That fact, he says, shows the prophecy is still waiting, not broken:
Many travellers have passed through Idumea and lived to write and publish their accounts... So even on the plainest ground of fact, it became clear that the prophecy had not failed. Its time of fulfilment is still future. It is to be a land where people no longer dwell, and where no strangers pass through for ever.
One Hebrew word here has puzzled translators. A reference work sets out the choices they made for the creature that nests in these ruins:
The word qippoz appears in Isa. 34:15 only. It is translated 'great owl' (R.V. 'arrowsnake'; LXX and Vulgate 'hedgehog'...). There are several well-known species of owl, but we cannot say with certainty which of them these various words mean.
The birds that gather at the end of the verse take their name from where they live. The same dictionary calls the Hebrew dayyah "a bird inhabiting ruins," a kite (Morrish Bible Dictionary).
The chapter is not a random act of severity. Kelly reads it as the closing of a family story that began with twin brothers:
In chapter 34 the Spirit of God has brought together the two extremes on earth: judgement without sparing and mercy without any mixture... These nations, the one judged and the other blessed, sprang from the same stock, the same father and the same mother. They branched out into twin brothers: Esau on the one hand and Jacob on the other. The land of Idumea is the centre of the one picture, as of the other is Zion.
God promises other nations a return from captivity. He makes no such promise here, and the coming age of joy leaves this land as it is:
Unlike the hope held out to some other enemies, Jehovah does not say that He will bring them back from captivity in the latter days... their fate is sealed though for different reasons. The joy of the age to come will not reverse its sad sentence. As long as the earth lasts, Idumea will lie desolate. The unrelenting, unforgiving hate of Edom's sons for the Jews will bring on them the destruction they deserve.
The verse ends with each bird beside its mate. The next verse tells the reader to check that list against God's own book, and Kelly makes that check a test of prophecy itself:
What was then accomplished became the earnest of all that remains to be fulfilled... In that day we will search the book of Jehovah and read, and not one of them will be missing; none will lack its mate. For His mouth has commanded, and His Spirit has gathered these mournful witnesses of His final judgments. One of the commonest forms of unbelief... is to use what was fulfilled in the past to set aside the far greater times still to come.
In Revelation, fallen Babylon becomes a home for unclean birds. Walter Scott ties those birds back to this chapter:
The unclean birds, birds of prey and of darkness, signify the many and varied agents of Satan (Matt. 13:4, 32; Jer. 5:27; especially Isa. 34:11-15), those, of course, being very harmful and destructive.
- Cause — Edom and Israel came from one family. The lasting hatred of Esau's line for Jacob's brings this sentence.
- Sentence — nesting creatures and paired birds of prey take over the land. Writers admit the Hebrew names are uncertain, but the picture of reoccupied ruins is clear.
- Timing — writers place the full blow at the end of the age, not in Nebuchadnezzar's day. Travellers who crossed the land showed the prophecy still waits.
- Permanence — God promises no return from captivity here, and the coming age of joy will not lift the desolation.
- Certainty — the verse's own footnote is the book of the Lord: not one creature missing, not one without its mate.