Isaiah 18
1 Terrible things will happen to [you people] of Ethiopia! In your land there are many sailboats at the upper part of the Nile River.
Ah, the land of the rustling of wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia:
2 Your rulers send ambassadors that sail [quickly] down the river in papyrus boats. You messengers to Ethiopia, go quickly! Go [up the river] to people who are tall and who have smooth skin. People everywhere are afraid of those people, because they conquer and destroy [other nations]; they live in a land that is divided by branches of one large river.
that sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of papyrus upon the waters, [saying], Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation tall and smooth, to a people terrible from their beginning onward; a nation that meteth out and treadeth down, whose land the rivers divide!
3 [You messengers] must tell people everywhere, to people everywhere, “Look when I lift up my battle flag on top of the mountain, and listen when I blow the ram’s horn [to signal that the battle is about to begin].”
All ye inhabitants of the world, and ye dwellers on the earth, when an ensign is lifted up on the mountains, see ye; and when the trumpet is blown, hear ye.
4 [Listen] because Yahweh has told me this: “I will watch quietly from where I live. I will watch as quietly as [SIM] the heat waves shimmer as they rises on a hot summer day, as quietly as the dew forms [on the ground] during harvest time.”
For thus hath the LORD said unto me, I will be still, and I will behold in my dwelling place; like clear heat in sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.
5 But [even] before the army of Ethiopia starts to attack, while their plans are [slowly forming] like [SIM] grapes that are ripening, Yahweh will [get rid of them like a farmer who] [MET] cuts off the new shoots of the grapevines with his shears, and prunes the branches that have become very long.
For afore the harvest, when the blossom is over, and the flower becometh a ripening grape, he shall cut off the sprigs with pruning-hooks, and the spreading branches shall he take away [and] cut down.
6 All [the soldiers in the army of Ethiopia] will be killed, and their corpses will lie in the fields for vultures to eat their flesh in the (summer/hot season). Then wild animals will [chew on their bones] all during the (winter/cold season).
They shall be left together unto the ravenous birds of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth: and the ravenous birds shall summer upon them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them.
7 At that time, the people of that land that is divided by the branches of that one big river will take gifts to Yahweh in Jerusalem. Those tall people who have smooth/dark skin, whom people everywhere are afraid of, because they conquer and destroy many countries, will take gifts to Jerusalem, the city where the Commander of the armies of angels lives.
In that time shall a present be brought unto the LORD of hosts of a people tall and smooth, and from a people terrible from their beginning onward; a nation that meteth out and treadeth down, whose land the rivers divide, to the place of the name of the LORD of hosts, the mount Zion.
