World English Bible

Isaiah 18

1 Ah, the land of the rustling of wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia;

2 that sends ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of papyrus on the waters, [saying], Go, you swift messengers, to a nation tall and smooth, to a people awesome from their beginning onward, a nation that measures out and treads down, whose land the rivers divide!

3 All you inhabitants of the world, and you dwellers on the earth, when an ensign is lifted up on the mountains, see you; and when the trumpet is blown, hear you.

4 For thus has Yahweh said to me, I will be still, and I will see in my dwelling-place, like clear heat in sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.

5 For before the harvest, when the blossom is over, and the flower becomes a ripening grape, he will cut off the sprigs with pruning-hooks, and the spreading branches will he take away [and] cut down.

6 They shall be left together to the ravenous birds of the mountains, and to the animals of the earth; and the ravenous birds shall summer on them, and all the animals of the earth shall winter on them.

7 In that time shall a present be brought to Yahweh of Hosts [from] a people tall and smooth, even from a people awesome from their beginning onward, a nation that measures out and treads down, whose land the rivers divide, to the place of the name of Yahweh of Hosts, Mount Zion.