What is the context?
The judgment now names Edom and Bozrah. A sword and a great sacrifice picture the slaughter, while the reason is stated as the Lord’s day of vengeance for Zion’s cause. The scene presents judgment as His answer to wrong, rather than an uncontrolled contest between equal powers.
Edom’s streams, soil and land are pictured as tar, sulfur and burning pitch. Nobles and princes come to nothing; thorns take over towers and fortresses; and creatures occupy the places where people had lived.
The measuring line and plumb line in verse 11 reverse the usual expectation of building. The Hebrew words tohu, pronounced TOH-hoo, and bohu, pronounced BOH-hoo, are also paired in Genesis 1:2. Brown–Driver–Briggs and its entry for bohu connect their use here with chaos and emptiness. The picture is of an ordered human place being reduced to waste.
The closing command is to search and read the Lord’s scroll. The creatures will have their allotted place because His mouth has commanded and His Spirit gathers them. The ruins are not beyond His rule.
How is this passage commonly understood?
Henry and Wesley read Edom as both the named enemy and a picture of opposition to God’s people more broadly. They see its desolation as a warning that attempts to ruin God’s people end in the ruin of the oppressor.
For the night creature in verse 14, Gill discusses a night bird as well as the Jewish association of Lilith with a female demon. The Brown–Driver–Briggs entry and the USCCB note identify the name with that night-demon imagery. The BSB retains the broader wording night creature.
That difference concerns one part of the ruined-land picture. The passage’s main movement is clear: places of human power become uninhabited waste, and the Lord’s announced judgment stands.
Where does this fit in God's plan?
The language of smoke rising forever appears again in Revelation 14:9–13, in the warning against worshiping the beast, and in Revelation 19:1–4, in praise after the judgment of the great prostitute. The latter passage explicitly joins God’s true and just judgment with His answer to the blood of His servants.
The New Testament thus carries this prophetic language into its larger account of God ending corrupt power and answering violence. Revelation also calls the saints to perseverance and faith in Jesus.
This connection follows the shared judgment imagery; it does not by itself identify Edom’s territory with every place in Revelation. The promise is that oppression does not have the final word before God.
What is our position?
We don't have a position on this passage yet. When our study reaches a conclusion the text supports, it will appear here.