Isaiah 18

Modern English Version

“Go, swift messengers,
to a nation tall and smooth,
    to a people feared far and wide,
a nation strong and oppressive,
    whose land the rivers have divided.”

³ All you inhabitants of the world,
    and dwellers on the earth:
When he lifts up a banner on the mountains,
    you will see it;
and when he blows a trumpet,
    you will hear it.
⁴ For so the Lord said to me:
    I will look from My dwelling place quietly,
like dazzling heat in the sunshine,
    like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.
⁵ For before the harvest, when the bud is perfect
    and the sour grape is ripening in the flower,
then He shall both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks
    and take away and cut down the branches.
⁶ They shall be left together for the fowl of the mountains
    and for the beasts of the earth;
and the fowl shall spend the summer feeding on them,
    and all the beasts of the earth shall spend the winter on them.

from a people tall and smooth,
    and from a people feared far and wide,
a nation strong and oppressive,
    whose land the rivers have divided,