otcanon
Isaiah 18
Isaiah turns to a land of whirring wings beyond the rivers, sending swift messengers across the waters to a nation scattered and peeled, meted out and trodden down — language Isaiah will use again of the remnant. The ensign is lifted on the mountains and the trumpet is blown; the inhabitants of the world are summoned to see and hear. Jehovah holds still in His dwelling place, watching like clear heat and harvest dew, until the moment before the harvest when the unripe sprigs are cut off. The chapter closes with the present brought to mount Zion — the scattered and peeled people themselves carried to the place of the name. The gathering arc is named in miniature: ensign, trumpet, pruning, ingathering to Zion.
1
Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia:
2
That sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters, saying, Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled!
3
All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye.
4
For so the LORD said unto me, I will take my rest, and I will consider in my dwelling place like a clear heat upon herbs, and like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.
5
For afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect, and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, he shall both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks, and take away and cut down the branches.
6
They shall be left together unto the fowls of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth: and the fowls shall summer upon them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them.
7
In that time shall the present be brought unto the LORD of hosts of a people scattered and peeled, and from a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden under foot, whose land the rivers have spoiled, to the place of the name of the LORD of hosts, the mount Zion.
