Isaiah 18

Isaiah 17 Isaiah 19

Isaiah 18 New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition (NRSVACE)

An Oracle concerning Ethiopia

18 Ah, land of whirring wings
    beyond the rivers of Ethiopia,^[a]
²sending ambassadors by the Nile
    in vessels of papyrus on the waters!
Go, you swift messengers,
    to a nation tall and smooth,
to a people feared near and far,
    a nation mighty and conquering,
    whose land the rivers divide.

³All you inhabitants of the world,
    you who live on the earth,
when a signal is raised on the mountains, look!
    When a trumpet is blown, listen!
⁴For thus the Lord said to me:
I will quietly look from my dwelling
    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 shoots with pruning-hooks,
    and the spreading branches he will hew away.
⁶They shall all be left
    to the birds of prey of the mountains
    and to the animals of the earth.
And the birds of prey will summer on them,
    and all the animals of the earth will winter on them.

⁷At that time gifts will be brought to the Lord of hosts from^[b] a people tall and smooth, from a people feared near and far, a nation mighty and conquering, whose land the rivers divide, to Mount Zion, the place of the name of the Lord of hosts.

Footnotes:

Isaiah 18:1 Or Nubia; Heb Cush
Isaiah 18:7 Q Ms Gk Vg: MT of

New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition (NRSVACE)

New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993, 1995 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.