Isaiah Chapter 18
The Lord watches quietly from his dwelling before harvest-time judgment.
Following the burden of Damascus in Isaiah 17, Isaiah addresses a land beyond the rivers of Ethiopia that sends swift messengers by sea in vessels of bulrushes.
Ah, the land of the rustling of wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia;
that 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!
All you inhabitants of the world, and you dwellers on the earth, when an ensign is lifted up on the mountains, look; and when the trumpet is blown, listen.
For thus has 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.
For 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 the spreading branches will he take away [and] cut down.
They shall be left together to the ravenous birds of the mountains, and to the animals of the earth; and the ravenous birds shall summer on them, and all the animals of the earth shall winter on them.
In that time shall a present be brought to Yahweh of Hosts [from] a people tall and smooth, even from a people awesome from their beginning onward, a nation that measures out and treads down, whose land the rivers divide, to the place of the name of Yahweh of Hosts, Mount Zion.