Isaiah 34:6, commentary and pictures

The sword gorged with blood and fat and the sacrifice and slaughter in Bozrah and Idumea portray a complete and vast destruction of the guilty. It belongs to the judgment upon the nations and their armies that looks especially to the last days, to the day of the Lord's vengeance and recompense for Zion. Idumea stands not only for the ancient land but for the sin-cursed earth and its idolatrous inhabitants, so its desolation is a type of the absolute desolation of the world and the final punishment of the ungodly. That slaughter falls just before and in connection with Christ's second advent, when all the wicked then living are destroyed out of the land while the righteous dead are raised and the living righteous are changed and ascend to reign with Him a thousand years while the earth lies waste. After the thousand years the wicked dead are raised around the holy city and are utterly destroyed by fire from heaven, the unquenchable fire doing a complete work that at last goes out, and God makes a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.

Words and Historical Setting

The sword of the Lord is pictured as gorged with blood and glutted with fat, with the blood of lambs and goats and the fat of the kidneys of rams, to portray a sacrifice in Bozrah and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea and to show the completeness and scale of the destruction. The bloody sacrifice is the image of God's judgment on Idumea, a slaughter whose sacrificial animals and fatness measure how total the overthrow is.

The verse belongs to a judgment on the nations and their armies in chapters 24-35 that looks especially toward the last days. It belongs to the day of vengeance and recompense for the controversy of Zion, when the nations are gathered for the battle of the great day of God Almighty and the world faces its final upheaval and the outpouring of God's wrath.

Idumea or Edom is not only the small ancient region but signifies the earth or part of it receiving God's judgments. It represents this sin-cursed earth and its idolatrous inhabitants, in contrast with the promised inheritance of the earth made new. The prophecy has a twofold application, and its judgment on Idumea serves as a type of the world's absolute desolation under God's just judgments and of the final punishment of the ungodly and formal professors. The slaughter belongs to the day of the Lord's vengeance, the year of recompense for Zion's controversy understood as a prophetic year-day representing the period of the last plagues, and is applied to the whole earth and its desolation, not merely to ancient Idumea.

The surrounding description continues with fire and brimstone, fire not quenched night or day, and smoke rising forever, and with a land burned and laid waste through which no one passes forever and ever. Idumea was eventually laid waste, but it is not still burning, so forever can describe a complete judgment whose fire eventually goes out. The desolate land is followed in the next chapter by a land blossoming and inhabited by the Lord's ransomed, showing that forever can describe the period of desolation without meaning that the land remains desolate endlessly.

The terrible language of blood, sacrifice, and slaughter is as terrible as descriptions of the world's supposed burning, yet it portrays a judgment carried out through divine providence, not a personal appearance of the Lord or a literal collapse of the heavens and earth.

Day of Vengeance Foretold

The day of the Lord is a day of tumult, wrath, vengeance, and fierce anger, and not a time of mercy or probation. It lays the land desolate and makes a speedy riddance of all who dwell in it, for the Lord has a sacrifice and a great slaughter of the wicked. It is darkness and not light, wasteness and desolation, cruel with wrath and fierce anger, terrible and not to be abided, and it is never called the accepted time or day of salvation wherein mercy is offered to sinners.

The great slaughter in Idumea under the image of a sacrifice at Bozrah belongs to the day of the Lord's vengeance and the year of recompense for the controversy of Zion. That day or year is a prophetic year-day representing the period of the last plagues. It is the time of the last plagues and of Christ's coming, when the judgment falls upon the whole earth and the earth is desolated.

The sacrifice and slaughter teach a terrible destruction upon the world just before and in connection with Christ's second advent. At His second coming the earth is left desolate, with the sinners then living destroyed out of the land by a great slaughter. All wicked men then living are destroyed at the second advent, while the righteous dead are raised and the living righteous are changed, made immortal, and ascend with their Lord to the eternal city to reign with Him in judgment for a thousand years while the earth lies waste. The judgment and slaughter stand behind the warning that those who worship the beast will face God's wrath and fiery punishment. The chapter is linked with the fall of Babylon and the return to Zion with joy as part of a pattern pointing to the end of the world and the Gospel dispensation.

Millennial Desolation and Renewal

The sacrifice in Bozrah and great slaughter in Idumea describe the desolation of the earth during the millennium after the wicked are destroyed at Christ's second advent. That judgment leaves all wicked men then living slain out of the land, while the righteous dead are raised and the living righteous are changed and made immortal. The immortal subjects of the kingdom then ascend with their Lord to the eternal city to reign with Him in the judgment of the wicked for a thousand years while the earth lies waste. Idumea in this prophecy is a type of the earth in its desolate millennial condition, when the saints are in heaven and the earth is left without inhabitants.

During that desolate time with no human inhabitants, animal life remains on the earth, left as a roaming place for wild beasts and birds of prey. Beasts and birds may survive and multiply among the ruins of the final overthrow of the nations at Christ's coming. That animal life increases during the thousand years, so that after the dead are raised at the end of the thousand years they feed upon what has increased.

The slaughter begins a sequence in which all the living wicked are slain and all the righteous are made immortal and ascend to the New Jerusalem to reign with Christ during one thousand years while this earth lies desolate. Then the saints with Christ and the holy city descend to this earth, and the wicked dead are raised and with Satan come up around the holy city. They are utterly destroyed by fire from heaven, this earth becomes one vast lake of fire, and from it God brings a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.

The earth will lie desolate like ruined Carthage and Nineveh until it is renewed. Edom with its slaughter represents this sin-cursed earth and its idolatrous inhabitants, in contrast with the promised inheritance of the earth made new. That desolation lasts through the thousand years, and the earth is not entirely wrapped in flame until that period ends.