Isaiah 18

1 “Woe to the land of winged ships beyond Ethiopia’s rivers.”

2 “It sends hostages and papyrus letters over the sea. Swift messengers will go to a lofty nation, a foreign and harsh people. Who is beyond it? It is a nation without hope and trampled down. Now, as for the rivers of the land:”

3 “They will all become like an inhabited country. Their land will be inhabited. When a signal is raised on a mountain, it will be seen, and it will be heard like a trumpet’s sound.”

4 “This is what the Lord said to me: ‘There will be security in my city, like noonday light and heat, and like a cloud of dew on a harvest day.’”

5 “Before harvest, when the blossom is complete and an unripe grape blooms, he will cut away the small clusters with pruning knives, remove the small branches, and cut them down.”

6 “He will leave them together for the birds of the sky and the wild animals of the earth. Birds will gather over them, and every wild animal will come against them.”

7 “At that time gifts will be brought to the Lord of armies from an afflicted, plucked people, a great people from now on and forever—a nation that hopes yet is trampled down, living beside a river in its land—to Mount Zion, the place called by the name of the Lord of armies.”