Isaiah 18

1 Woe to the land of whirring wings, along the rivers of Cush,

Woe to you, you wings of the land of ships, beyond the rivers of Ethiopia.

2 which sends couriers by sea, in papyrus vessels on the waters. Go, swift messengers, to a people tall and smooth-skinned, to a people widely feared, to a powerful nation of strange speech, whose land is divided by rivers.

He sends messengers by the sea, and paper letters on the water: for swift messengers shall go to a lofty nation, and to a strange and harsh people. Who is beyond it? a nation not looked for, and trodden down.

3 All you people of the world and dwellers of the earth, when a banner is raised on the mountains, you will see it; when a ram’s horn sounds, you will hear it.

Now all the rivers of the land shall be inhabited as an inhabited country; their land shall be as when a signal is raised from a mountain; it shall be audible as the sound of a trumpet.

4 For this is what the LORD has told me: “I will quietly look on from My dwelling place, like shimmering heat in the sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.”

For thus said the Lord to me, There shall be security in my city, as the light of noonday heat, and it shall be as a cloud of dew in the day of harvest.

5 For before the harvest, when the blossom is gone and the flower becomes a ripening grape, He will cut off the shoots with a pruning knife and remove and discard the branches.

Before the reaping time, when the flower has been completely formed, and the unripe grape has put forth its flower and blossomed, then shall he take away the little clusters with pruning-hooks, and shall take away the small branches, and cut them off;

6 They will all be left to the mountain birds of prey, and to the beasts of the land. The birds will feed on them in summer, and all the wild animals in winter.

And he shall leave [them] together to the birds of the sky, and to the wild beasts of the earth: and the fowls of the sky shall be gathered upon them, and all the beasts of the land shall come upon him.

7 At that time gifts will be brought to the LORD of Hosts— from a people tall and smooth-skinned, from a people widely feared, from a powerful nation of strange speech, whose land is divided by rivers— to Mount Zion, the place of the Name of the LORD of Hosts.

In that time shall presents be brought to the Lord of hosts from a people afflicted and peeled, and from a people great from henceforth and for ever; a nation hoping and [yet] trodden down, which is in a part of a river of his land, to the place where is the name of the Lord of hosts, the mount Sion.