Isaiah 34:1

1 Draw in close now, nations. Listen carefully, you people. Pay attention! Earth, you too, and everything in you. World, and all that comes from you.

Isaiah 34:1 Meaning and Commentary

Isaiah 34:1

Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye people,
&c.] Not the people of the Jews, as some, whose utter destruction, after their rejection of the Messiah, is here thought to be prophesied of; and much less are these people called upon to hear the Gospel preached to them, as Cocceius thinks; for not good, but bad news they are called to hearken to, even the account of their utter ruin: let the earth hear, and all that is therein:
not the land of Judea, but all the earth, and the inhabitants of it: the world, and all things that come forth of it;
which may either be understood of those that dwell in it, as the Targum interprets it; of the people that are in it, as the Septuagint and the Oriental versions; and so the phrase may denote the original of them, being of the earth, earthly, and to which they must return again; and may be designed to humble men, and hide pride from them; or else the fruits of the earth, trees, and everything that spring out of it, which are called upon to hear the voice of the Lord, when men would not; and so is designed to rebuke the stupidity and sluggishness of men to hearken to what is said to them, even from the Lord, when upon the brink of destruction.

Isaiah 34:1 In-Context

1 Draw in close now, nations. Listen carefully, you people. Pay attention! Earth, you too, and everything in you. World, and all that comes from you.

2 And here's why: God is angry, good and angry with all the nations, So blazingly angry at their arms and armies that he's going to rid earth of them, wipe them out.

3 The corpses, thrown in a heap, will stink like the town dump in midsummer, Their blood flowing off the mountains like creeks in spring runoff.

4 Stars will fall out of the sky like overripe, rotting fruit in the orchard, And the sky itself will be folded up like a blanket and put away in a closet. All that army of stars, shriveled to nothing, like leaves and fruit in autumn, dropping and rotting!

5 "Once I've finished with earth and sky, I'll start in on Edom. I'll come down hard on Edom, a people I've slated for total termination."