Isaiah 18:1-5 ▼

1 Woe to the land of whirring wings (of many locusts), along the rivers of Cush (the upper Nile region),

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

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.

4 For this is what the LORD {YHWH} 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.”

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.