to approach (causatively · verb, qal imperative, 2nd person masculine plural
nations
גוֹיִם֙go.Yim
H1471
a foreign nation · noun, common masculine plural absolute
hear
לִשְׁמֹ֔עַlish.Mo.a'
H8085
to hear intelligently (often with implication of attent… · preposition + verb, qal infinitive construct
hearken
הַקְשִׁ֑יבוּhak.Shi.vu
H7181
to prick up the ears · verb, hiphil imperative, 2nd person masculine plural
people
וּלְאֻמִּ֖יםu.le.'u.Mim
H3816
a community · conjunction + noun, common masculine plural absolute
earth
הָאָ֙רֶץ֙ha.'A.retz
H776
the earth (at large · definite article + noun, common feminine singular absolute
hear
תִּשְׁמַ֤עtish.Ma'
H8085
to hear intelligently (often with implication of attent… · verb, qal imperfect, 3rd person feminine singular
therein
וּמְלֹאָ֔הּu.me.lo.'Ah
H4393
fulness (literally or figuratively) · conjunction + noun, common masculine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person feminine singular
world
תֵּבֵ֖לte.Vel
H8398
the earth (as moist and therefore inhabited) · noun, common feminine singular absolute
forth
צֶאֱצָאֶֽיהָtze.'e.tza.'Ei.ha
H6631
issue · noun, common masculine plural construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person feminine singular
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Isaiah 1:2 Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against m…
Isaiah 41:1 Keep silence before me, O islands; and let the people renew their strength: let them come near; then let them speak: let us come near togeth…
Isaiah 43:9 Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled: who among them can declare this, and shew us former things? let t…
Deuteronomy 32:1 Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.
Isaiah 33:13 Hear, ye that are far off, what I have done; and, ye that are near, acknowledge my might.
Jeremiah 22:29 O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the LORD.
Micah 6:1-2 Hear ye now what the LORD saith; Arise, contend thou before the mountains, and let the hills hear thy voice.
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 34:1-8
Here we have a prophecy, as elsewhere we have a history, of the wars of the Lord, which we are sure are all both righteous and successful. This world, as it is his creature, he does good to; but as it is in the interest of Satan, who is called the god of this world, he fights against it.
I. Here is the trumpet sounded and the war proclaimed, Isa 34:1. All nations must hear and hearken, not only because what God is about to do is well worthy their remark (as Isa 33:13), but because they are all concerned in it; it is with them that God has a quarrel; it is against them that God is coming forth in wrath. Let them all take notice that the great God is angry with them; his indignation is upon al…
Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye people,.... 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…
Draw near, ye nations. Hitherto the Prophet, intentding to comfort the children of God, preached, as it were, in the midst of them; but now, directing his discourse to the Gentiles, he pursues the same subject, but in a different manner. Having formerly shewn (Isaiah 33:6, 20) that the Lord takes such care of his people as to find out the means of preserving them, he now likewise adds, what we have often seen in earlier parts of this book, that, after having permitted wicked men to harass them for a time, he will at length be their avenger, He therefore pursues the same subject, but with a different kind of consolation; for he describes what terrible vengeance the Lord will take on wicked me…
The Church Fathers
(Chapter 34, Verse 1, etc.) Come near, you nations, and listen; pay attention, you peoples! Let the earth and all that fills it hear, the world and all that springs from it. For the Lord's indignation is against all the nations, and His fury is against all their armies; He has utterly destroyed them and given them over to slaughter. Their slain will be thrown out, and the stench of their corpses will rise; the mountains will be drenched with their blood. And all the host of heaven will rot away; the skies will roll up like a scroll, and all their host will wither away like a withered leaf from the vine, like foliage from the fig tree. For my sword is drenched in the heavens; indeed, it is drunk with blood. Behold, he will come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my slaughter, to judgment. The sword of the Lord is filled with blood, it is made thick with fatness, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fatness of the kidneys of rams: for there is a victim of the Lord in Bosra, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom. And the unicorns shall come down with them, and the bullocks with the bulls: and their land shall be soaked with blood, and their soil made fat with fatness. After the overthrow of Jerusalem, and the shipwreck of the once very firm ship, and the plunder of all its furnishings, it is said concerning the destruction of all nations, and concerning the consummation of the world, which is in the future day of judgment. Whereby all peoples and nations of the earth and its fullness, the world and all its offspring, both those inhabited places and those uninhabitable due to excessive cold and heat, are commanded to hear, and to know with every trembling of the mind what is to come. For the wrath of the Lord is not only against one nation, the Jews, but also against the Assyrians and Chaldeans, the Egyptians, Moabites, and Ammonites, and the Philistines; but also against all nations, and against the entire host, or as the Septuagint translated, their number. She is described as a venture, which kills them and causes the stench of decaying bodies to rise up high, signifying the sins of all nations, so that their filth and impurities fill the mountains with blood. The lofty virtues and angels that presided over each nation and all the celestial hosts wither away, or fold up like a book, and all their armies and forces, as the LXX have…
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
What the prophet here foretells relates to all nations, and to every individual within them, in their relation to the congregation of Jehovah. He therefore commences with the appeal in Isa 34:1-3 : "Come near, ye peoples, to hear; and he nations, attend. Let the earth hear, and that which fills it, the world, and everything that springs from it. For the indignation of Jehovah will fall upon all nations, and burning wrath upon all their host; He has laid the ban upon them, delivered them to the slaughter. And their slain are cast away, and their corpses - their stench will arise, and mountains melt with their blood." The summons does not invite them to look upon the completion of the judgment…
