Isaiah 34:11
“But the cormorant and the bittern shall possess it; the owl also and the raven shall dwell in it: and he shall stretch out upon it the line of confusion, and the stones of emptiness.”
King James Version (KJV)
Read this verse in context with translation switching:
Read Full Chapter →Birds of desolation take possession; the land is surveyed with lines of confusion and marked by stones of emptiness.
Context
These birds are unclean in the Levitical code; their presence indicates a place abandoned by humanity and reclaimed by chaos. The image of measuring with lines of confusion invokes the chaos before creation.
What Does Isaiah 34:11 Mean?
The cormorant and bittern, the owl and raven, birds associated with desolation and night, now possess Edom. They dwell where humans once built and ruled. The stretching out of lines of confusion and stones of emptiness suggests a surveying, a parceling out of the wasteland. Confusion (tohu) appears in Genesis 1:2, describing the chaos before God brought order. Here, God reorders Edom back into chaos, unmakes it. The stones of emptiness are no comfort, no hope, but only monuments to the void.
In contrast stands the new Jerusalem in Revelation, with its streets of gold, its walls of jasper, its gates that never close. Jesus does not leave us in a wasteland but builds for us a city whose builder and maker is God.
In the Original Language
tohu (תהו), 'confusion, chaos, emptiness' -- the primordial chaos before creation, here applied to a judgment that unmakes what was ordered
Application
Abandonment by God is the deepest loneliness. Yet Christ promises that those who believe will never be forsaken, that He will build them a house and a city of eternal welcome.