Isaiah 18

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

2that 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!”

3All you inhabitants of the world, and you dwellers on the earth, when a banner is lifted up on the mountains, look! When the trumpet is blown, listen!

4For 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.”

5For 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 he will cut down and take away the spreading branches.