The Nations Hear Cosmic Judgment Focused on Edom

All nations are summoned, and the heavens dissolve as a sword comes down on Edom

Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye people: let the earth hear, and all that is therein; the world, and all things that come forth of it. For the indignation of the LORD is upon all nations, and his fury upon all their armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter. Their slain also shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up out of their carcases, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood. And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree.

For my sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold, it shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment. The universal summons narrows to Edom. Cosmic slaughter language is oracle, not a human campaign. The Edom imagery does not map ancient Edom onto a modern ethnicity or state, authorize genocide, or celebrate ecological and civilian devastation.

A sacrifice in Bozrah and a day of recompences for Zion's controversy

The sword of the LORD is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams: for the LORD hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea. 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. For it is the day of the LORD's vengeance, and the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion.

Bozrah's sacrifice is poetic holy-war against Edom in Zion's cause. Readers must not take the soaked land as a model, must not hunt Edom in today's politics, and must not enjoy the stink of carcasses as piety.