Isaiah · Chapter 18 · 7 verses
Isaiah 18
About this chapter
Isaiah 18 — Assyrian Crisis Period
Isaiah — Prophet to Judah during times of national crisis. Set in Jerusalem, with focus on distant Ethiopia (Cush). Isaiah addresses the mysterious land of Cush beyond the rivers, likely Ethiopia, whose ambassadors have come seeking military alliance. God declares He will watch silently from heaven like heat shimmering over a harvest field, then suddenly act when the time is perfectly ripe.
“Isaiah 18:4” — 18:4
The tension of waiting for God's perfect timing while nations scramble for security.
Read when: Read this when you're waiting for God to act and wondering if He sees what's happening around you.
1Ah, the land of the rustling of wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia; 2that 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!" 3All you inhabitants of the world, and you dwellers on the earth, when a banner is lifted up on the mountains, look! When the trumpet is blown, listen! 4For 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." 5For 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 he will cut down and take away the spreading branches. 6They will be left together for the ravenous birds of the mountains, and for the animals of the earth. The ravenous birds will summer on them, and all the animals of the earth will winter on them. 7In that time, a present will be brought to Yahweh of Armies 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 Armies, Mount Zion.