Isaiah 18
The Lord’s Message to Cush
1 Ah! The land of buzzing insect wings ▼▼Or of sailing ships
beyond the rivers of ▼
▼Cush/ Cushite: The lands of the Nile in southern Egypt, including Nubia and Northern Sudan; the people who lived in that region
Cush c 2 sends couriers by sea,
in reed vessels on the waters.
Go, swift messengers,
to a nation tall and smooth-skinned,
to a people feared far and near,
a powerful nation with a strange language, ▼
▼Hb obscure
whose land is divided by rivers.
3 All you inhabitants of the world
and you who live on the earth,
when a banner is raised on the mountains, look!
When a trumpet sounds, listen!
4 For, the Lord said to me:I will quietly look out from My place,
like shimmering heat in sunshine,
like a rain cloud in harvest heat.
5 For before the harvest, when the blossoming is over
and the blossom becomes a ripening grape,
He will cut off the shoots with a pruning knife,
and tear away and remove the branches.
6 They will all be left for the birds of prey on the hills
and for the wild animals of the land.
The birds will spend the summer on them,
and all the animals, the winter on them.
7At that time a gift will be brought to ▼
▼Yahweh/Yah: Or The Lord; the personal name of God in Hebrew; "Yah" is the shortened form of the name.
Yahweh of ▼▼Hosts/hosts: Military forces consisting of God's angels, sometimes including the sun, moon, and stars, and occasionally, Israel
Hosts from ▼▼DSS, LXX, Vg; MT omits from
a people tall and smooth-skinned, h a people feared far and near, a powerful nation with a strange language, whose land is divided by rivers – to Mount ▼▼Zion: Originally a term for the fortified section of Jerusalem and then, by extension, used for the temple and the city of Jerusalem both in the present time and in the future
Zion, the place of the name of Yahweh of Hosts.
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