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.
Where the Verse Stands
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 Creatures Named
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.
Deserts and the Fear of Demons
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".
Ruin, Not Original Condition
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.
Edom's Ruin and Israel's Blessing
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.
Echo in Revelation
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.
Summary
- 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.