Isaiah 18

The Lord’s Message to Cush

1 Woe to the land of buzzing insect wings  * 18:1 Or of sailing ships

beyond the rivers of Cush,  * 18:1 2Kg 19:9; Is 20:3–5; Ezk 30:4–5,9; Zph 2:12; 3:10

2 which sends envoys by sea,

in reed vessels over the water.

Go, swift messengers,

to a nation tall and smooth-skinned,

to a people feared far and near,

a powerful nation with a strange language,  * 18:2 Hb obscure

whose land is divided by rivers.

3 All you inhabitants of the world

and you who live on the earth,

when a banner is raised on the mountains, look!

When a ram’s horn sounds, listen!

4 For the Lord said to me:

I will quietly look out from my place,

like shimmering heat in sunshine,

like a rain cloud in harvest heat.

5 For before the harvest, when the blossoming is over

and the blossom becomes a ripening grape,

he will cut off the shoots with a pruning knife,

and tear away and remove the branches.

6 They will all be left for the birds of prey on the hills

and for the wild animals of the land.

The birds of prey will spend the summer feeding on them,

and all the wild animals the winter.

7 At that time a gift will be brought to the Lord of Armies from  * 18:7 DSS, LXX, Vg; MT omits from a people tall and smooth-skinned,  * 18:7 Ps 68:31; Is 45:14; Zph 3:10; Ac 8:27–38 a people feared far and near, a powerful nation with a strange language, whose land is divided by rivers — to Mount Zion, the place of the name of the Lord of Armies.