Isaiah 34:7
And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness. And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls; and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust made fat with fatness.
The slaughter brings down the mighty with the weak until the ground is drenched with blood and made rich with fat. Idumea here stands for this sin-cursed earth and its idolatrous dwellers under God's just judgment unto utter desolation. It takes place in the day of the Lord's vengeance and recompense for Zion, when His indignation is upon all nations and His fury upon all their armies. At Christ's second coming the living wicked are destroyed out of the land and the earth is left desolate and incapable of supporting human life, while the risen and changed saints ascend to heaven for the thousand years. When the thousand years are finished the wicked dead are raised to compass the holy city and are utterly destroyed by fire from heaven, from which God brings a new earth wherein dwells righteousness.
Context and Imagery
The slaughter and bloodshed is too great for the small country of literal Idumea, a strip of mountainous land about a hundred miles long by fifteen or twenty wide, so it does not describe that past ruin but the punishment and desolation of Idumea as the earth, or some portion of it, receiving the judgments of God. It belongs to a graphic prophecy of national judgment carried out through divine providence and fulfilled in the destruction of Idumea, not to a personal appearance of God or a literal darkening of the heavenly bodies and upheaval of the earth. That section of prophecy looks especially toward the last days and God's judgments upon the earth.
Edom or Idumea represents this sin-cursed earth and its idolatrous dwellers, serving as a type of the world under God's just judgments unto absolute desolation. Idumea is used as a type of the earth during the millennium, pictured through its land, where people are destroyed while the closing scene leaves an uninhabited earth as a roaming place for wild beasts and birds of prey. The judgment on Idumea is a type of the final punishment of the ungodly and formal professors, extending the prophecy beyond the ancient judgment to its later fulfillment.
The unicorns and bullocks are among those brought down in the great slaughter, and the devastation is bloody and complete, with the land soaked with blood and its dust made fat with fatness. Animal life remains on the earth after humanity has been destroyed and the earth left desolate, so the earth is not entirely wrapped in flame until the thousand years end. The beasts remaining amid the ruined land can multiply during the thousand years after the second coming and provide food for the wicked when they are raised. The desolation is not everlasting, for the word forever in this context means as long as the destruction can continue, since the surrounding prophecy shows the land blossoming and being inhabited by the ransomed. The verse stands among prophecies coupled with the return to Zion with songs and everlasting joy, in which the return from Babylon points to the Gospel dispensation.
Day of Vengeance and Millennium
The verse takes place in the day of the Lord's vengeance and recompense for Zion, when His indignation is upon all nations and His fury upon all their armies. It is also called the day of tumult and the day of wrath and fierce anger. Then the heavens are rolled together as a scroll and their hosts fall like a falling fig from the fig tree, the Lord arises to shake terribly the earth, and the great day of judgment dawns upon a guilty world. Then the nations are gathered to the battle of that great day of God Almighty, in close connection with the awful scenes of the great day of final accounts.
That day of the Lord is cruel wrath and fierce anger to lay the land desolate and to destroy the sinners out of it. It brings bloodshed and desolation upon all the heathen, wasteness and desolation, darkness and gloominess, trumpet and alarm, until the whole land is devoured by the fire of His jealousy. It is wrath and not mercy, darkness and not light, judgment and final execution upon impenitent sinners whose probation has expired. It is never the accepted time or day of salvation wherein mercy is offered to sinners on probation.
The day is also called a year of recompense for Zion, so it is a prophetic year-day and refers to the period of the last plagues, not merely a literal day. It belongs to the judgment and desolation that come upon the earth at Christ's coming. It warns that the Lord will bring plagues, famine, pestilence, wars, and terrible destruction upon the world just before and in connection with Christ's coming. Then divine wrath brings a final overthrow amid the nations' conflict and carnage, and this slaughter with the land soaked with blood and made fat with fatness is the fate of those who engage in false worship.
At Christ's second coming the living wicked are destroyed and the sinners are destroyed out of the land, with the ground drenched in blood and fat. The earth is left desolate and incapable of supporting human life, its land soaked with blood. At the same time the risen and changed saints ascend to heaven with the Lord to reign. No one lives on or passes through the earth during the thousand years until the rest of the dead are raised.
The slaughter leaves the earth desolate during the millennium after all wicked men have been destroyed at the second advent, like the ruins of Carthage and Nineveh. It lies soaked with blood with its soil made rich with fat, and left without inhabitants until the thousand years are finished and the new earth is made. Meanwhile Christ and the saints reign in the New Jerusalem before it descends to earth. This destruction at Christ's return brings the earth's desolation during the millennium, before the wicked are raised and finally destroyed and God brings a new earth.
The destruction is a literal, universal clearing of the living wicked that leaves the earth empty during the thousand years while all the righteous are made immortal and ascend to the New Jerusalem to reign with Christ. Then the saints with Christ and the holy city descend to this earth. Then the wicked dead are raised and with Satan come up around the holy city and are utterly destroyed by fire rained upon them from heaven. The earth becomes one vast lake of fire, from which God brings a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.