| Chapter 18 |
1 | Ah, the land of the rustling of wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia; |
2 | 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! |
3 | All you inhabitants of the world, and you dwellers on the earth, when an ensign is lifted up on the mountains, see you; and when the trumpet is blown, hear you. |
4 | 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. |
5 | 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. |
6 | 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. |
7 | 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. |