Isaiah 34:6
The sword of the LORD is bathed in blood. It drips with fat--with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams. For the LORD has a sacrifice in Bozrah, a great slaughter in the land of Edom.
Sermons
The Divine IndignationW. Clarkson Isaiah 34:1-15
EdomF. Delitzsch.Isaiah 34:1-17
Edom's PunishmentF. Delitzsch.Isaiah 34:1-17
Isaiah 34, and 35J. Parker, D. D.Isaiah 34:1-17
The Sins and Punishment of EdomE. Johnson Isaiah 34:1-17














It is important that we use the words which express the severe side of Divine dealings with great judgment and carefulness. We should resist the tendency of modern times to eliminate all the severer features from the conception of the Divine Being. Dr. Bushnell thus expresses it: "Our age is at the point of apogee from all the robuster notions of Deity." Our fathers made too much of t he Divine "wrath;" but we are in danger of making too little. There is a considerable variety of words that we may use to express this sterner side of the Divine dealing - 'wrath,' 'anger,' 'indignation,' 'fury,' 'vengeance,' 'judgment,' 'justice,' and the like, but they are all more or less defective. Wrath is the term most commonly used in our translation, and it is really the best, if only we can hold it closely enough to the idea of a moral, in distinction from a merely animal, passion; else, failing in this, it will connect associations of unregulated temper that are painful, and as far as possible from being sacred. It requires in this view, like the safety-lamps of the miners, a gauze of definition round it, to save it from blazing into an explosion too fierce to serve the purposes of light." Indignation is the most unexceptionable word, and it is to one point in connection with it that attention is now invited. It is especially suited to express the feeling of God, because it applies to wrong-doers rather than to wrong actions. It links on to the view that the essence of sin is not a wrong thing done, but the wrong will out of which the doing came. We cannot get up indignation merely at things done; our feeling settles and centers on the bad doers. In all cases of sin we should keep quite clearly before us that the Divine concern is not, supremely, the disturbed circumstances, but the sinners and the sufferers. Divine power can readjust and rearrange all our conditions and circumstances, just as that power can preserve the order, and put straight the broken or deflected order, of creation. It is God's own condition, laid upon himself, that moral states can only be reached by moral means. Divine indignations, as they concern moral beings, find expression in the persuasions of Divine judgments; these fall on the man himself, or they may fall on his substitute and representative; and so is opened up for treatment the mystery of Divine indignations resting on Christ for us, for our sakes. - R.T.

My sword shall be bathed in heaven.
The text draws back the curtain which separates the visible world from the invisible. It reveals celestial regions, in which there are also great struggles going on. It lifts up our eyes to the grander movements of the world of spirits; and then it declares that the sword which is to be used in fighting what seem to be the petty wars of the Hebrews and the Edomites, is the same sword which has been used in these celestial conflicts; that the means and instruments of righteousness upon the earth must be the same with the means and instruments of righteousness in the heavens.

I. ALL GOOD STRUGGLE IN THE WORLD IS REALLY GOD'S BATTLE, and ought to recognise itself as such. Every special victory of human progress — the victory over slavery, superstition, social wrong, nay, even the victory over tough matter, the subduing of the hard stuff of nature to spiritual uses, — each of these is but a step in the great onward march of God taking possession of His own. Fight your battle with the sword bathed in heaven; so you shall make it victorious, and grow strong and great yourself in fighting it.

II. One of the most marvellous things about Jesus is the UNION OF FIRE AND PATIENCE. He saw His Father's house turned into a place of merchandise, and instantly the whip of small cords was in His hands, and He was cleansing the sacred place with His impassioned indignation. And yet He walked day after day through the streets of Jerusalem, and saw the sin, and let the sinners sin on with only the remonstrance of His pure presence and His pitying gaze. Only in God's own time and in God's own way can the battles of the Lord be fought. There is no self-will in Jesus. He is one with His Father, and lives by His Father's will. His sword was always bathed in heaven.

III. THE BATTLE WHICH GOES ON WITHIN OURSELVES IS GOD'S BATTLE, and is of supreme importance. If the battle be God's, it must be fought only with God's weapons. You want to get rid of your selfishness. You must not kill it with the sword of another selfishness, which thenceforth shall rule in its place. Selfishness can only be cast out by self-forget-fulness and consecration. To count sin God's enemy, and to fight it with all His purity and strength, that is what it means for us that our sword should be bathed m heaven.

(Phillips Brooks, D. D.)

People
Isaiah, Kites
Places
Bozrah, Edom, Jerusalem, Zion
Topics
Bathed, Best, Blood, Bozrah, Cattle, Covered, Death, Edom, Fat, Fatness, Feast, Filled, Full, Goats, Gorged, He-goats, Idumea, Kidneys, Lambs, Meat, Rams, Sacrifice, Sated, Sheep, Slaughter, Sword
Outline
1. The judgments wherewith God revenges his church
11. The desolation of her enemies
16. The certainty of the prophecy

Dictionary of Bible Themes
Isaiah 34:5-6

     5129   bathing

Isaiah 34:6-7

     4615   bull
     5858   fat

Library
Opposition to Messiah Ruinous
Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel T here is a species of the sublime in writing, which seems peculiar to the Scripture, and of which, properly, no subjects but those of divine revelation are capable, With us, things inconsiderable in themselves are elevated by splendid images, which give them an apparent importance beyond what they can justly claim. Thus the poet, when describing a battle among bees, by a judicious selection of epithets
John Newton—Messiah Vol. 2

The Holy Spirit in Relation to the Father and the Son. ...
The Holy Spirit in relation to the Father and the Son. Under this heading we began by considering Justin's remarkable words, in which he declares that "we worship and adore the Father, and the Son who came from Him and taught us these things, and the host of the other good angels that attend Him and are made like unto Him, and the prophetic Spirit." Hardly less remarkable, though in a very different way, is the following passage from the Demonstration (c. 10); and it has a special interest from the
Irenæus—The Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching

How the Simple and the Crafty are to be Admonished.
(Admonition 12.) Differently to be admonished are the simple and the insincere. The simple are to be praised for studying never to say what is false, but to be admonished to know how sometimes to be silent about what is true. For, as falsehood has always harmed him that speaks it, so sometimes the hearing of truth has done harm to some. Wherefore the Lord before His disciples, tempering His speech with silence, says, I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now (Joh. xvi. 12).
Leo the Great—Writings of Leo the Great

Questions.
LESSON I. 1. In what state was the Earth when first created? 2. To what trial was man subjected? 3. What punishment did the Fall bring on man? 4. How alone could his guilt be atoned for? A. By his punishment being borne by one who was innocent. 5. What was the first promise that there should be such an atonement?--Gen. iii. 15. 6. What were the sacrifices to foreshow? 7. Why was Abel's offering the more acceptable? 8. From which son of Adam was the Seed of the woman to spring? 9. How did Seth's
Charlotte Mary Yonge—The Chosen People

Isaiah
CHAPTERS I-XXXIX Isaiah is the most regal of the prophets. His words and thoughts are those of a man whose eyes had seen the King, vi. 5. The times in which he lived were big with political problems, which he met as a statesman who saw the large meaning of events, and as a prophet who read a divine purpose in history. Unlike his younger contemporary Micah, he was, in all probability, an aristocrat; and during his long ministry (740-701 B.C., possibly, but not probably later) he bore testimony, as
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament

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