Isaiah 18

¹⁰From beyond the rivers of Cush My worshipers, My scattered people, will bring Me an offering.

⁹Now Sennacherib had been warned about Tirhakah king of Cush: “Look, he has set out to fight against you.” So Sennacherib again sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying,

⁴A sword will come against Egypt, and there will be anguish in Cush when the slain fall in Egypt, its wealth is taken away, and its foundations are torn down.

⁵Cush, Put, and Lud, and all the various peoples, as well as Libya and the men of the covenant land, will fall with Egypt by the sword.

¹²“You too, O Cushites, will be slain by My sword.”

⁷For You are my help; I will sing for joy in the shadow of Your wings.

¹Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, who rely on horses, who trust in their abundance of chariots and in their multitude of horsemen. They do not look to the Holy One of Israel; they do not seek the Lord.

⁷At that time gifts will be brought to the Lord of Hosts—from a people tall and smooth-skinned, from a people widely feared, from a powerful nation of strange speech, whose land is divided by rivers—to Mount Zion, the place of the Name of the Lord of Hosts.

⁸Cush was the father of Nimrod, who began to be a mighty one on the earth.

⁹He was a mighty hunter before the Lord; so it is said, “Like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord.”

⁸Were not the Cushites and Libyans a vast army with many chariots and horsemen? Yet because you relied on the Lord, He delivered them into your hand.

²In the fifth year of Rehoboam’s reign, because they had been unfaithful to the Lord, Shishak king of Egypt attacked Jerusalem

³with 1,200 chariots, 60,000 horsemen, and countless troops who came with him out of Egypt—Libyans, Sukkites, and Cushites.

⁹Then Zerah the Cushite came against them with an army of 1,000,000 men and 300 chariots, and they advanced as far as Mareshah.

⁹On that day messengers will go out from Me in ships to frighten Cush out of complacency. Anguish will come upon them on the day of Egypt’s doom. For it is indeed coming.

²⁶He lifts a banner for the distant nations and whistles for those at the ends of the earth. Behold—how speedily and swiftly they come!

¹⁶But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.

¹¹O Lord, Your hand is upraised, but they do not see it. They will see Your zeal for Your people and be put to shame. The fire set for Your enemies will consume them!

⁹The voice of the Lord calls out to the city (and it is sound wisdom to fear Your name): “Heed the rod and the One who ordained it.

⁹He who has ears, let him hear.”

²Raise a banner on a barren hilltop; call aloud to them. Wave your hand, that they may enter the gates of the nobles.

¹⁵Then I will return to My place until they admit their guilt and seek My face; in their affliction they will earnestly seek Me.”

²¹For behold, the Lord is coming out of His dwelling to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity. The earth will reveal her bloodshed and will no longer conceal her slain.

⁷At that time gifts will be brought to the Lord of Hosts—from a people tall and smooth-skinned, from a people widely feared, from a powerful nation of strange speech, whose land is divided by rivers—to Mount Zion, the place of the Name of the Lord of Hosts.

⁶Cry out and sing, O citizen of Zion, for great among you is the Holy One of Israel.”

¹³For the Lord has chosen Zion; He has desired it for His home:

¹⁴“This is My resting place forever and ever; here I will dwell, for I have desired this home.

⁴is like the light of the morning at sunrise of a cloudless dawn, the glistening after the rain on the sprouting grass of the earth.’

¹⁰For you have forgotten the God of your salvation and failed to remember the Rock of your refuge. Therefore, though you cultivate delightful plots and set out cuttings from exotic vines—

¹¹though on the day you plant you make them grow, and on that morning you help your seed sprout—yet the harvest will vanish on the day of disease and incurable pain.

¹⁵Catch for us the foxes—the little foxes that ruin the vineyards—for our vineyards are in bloom.

¹³The fig tree ripens its figs; the blossoming vines spread their fragrance. Arise, come away, my darling; come away with me, my beautiful one.”

⁶It sprouted and became a spreading vine, low in height, with branches turned toward him; yet its roots remained where it stood. So it became a vine and yielded branches and sent out shoots.

⁷But there was another great eagle with great wings and many feathers. And behold, this vine bent its roots toward him. It stretched out its branches to him from its planting bed, so that he might water it.

³³The corpses of this people will become food for the birds of the air and the beasts of the earth, and there will be no one to scare them away.

⁴I will abandon you on the land and hurl you into the open field. I will cause all the birds of the air to settle upon you, and all the beasts of the earth to eat their fill of you.

⁵I will put your flesh on the mountains and fill the valleys with your remains.

¹⁷And as for you, son of man, this is what the Lord God says: Call out to every kind of bird and to every beast of the field: ‘Assemble and come together from all around to the sacrificial feast that I am preparing for you, a great feast on the mountains of Israel. There you will eat flesh and drink blood.

¹⁸You will eat the flesh of the mighty and drink the blood of the princes of the earth as though they were rams, lambs, goats, and bulls—all the fattened animals of Bashan.

¹⁹But you are cast out of your grave like a rejected branch, covered by those slain with the sword, and dumped into a rocky pit like a carcass trampled underfoot.

³I will appoint over them four kinds of destroyers, declares the Lord: the sword to kill, the dogs to drag away, and the birds of the air and beasts of the earth to devour and destroy.

⁹Come, all you beasts of the field; eat greedily, all you beasts of the forest.

¹⁰From beyond the rivers of Cush My worshipers, My scattered people, will bring Me an offering.

²⁷So he started out, and on his way he met an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official in charge of the entire treasury of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. He had gone to Jerusalem to worship,

²⁸and on his return was sitting in his chariot reading Isaiah the prophet.

¹⁶Then all the survivors from the nations that came against Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, and to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.

¹⁷And should any of the families of the earth not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, then the rain will not fall on them.

⁴For this is what the Lord has told me: “I will quietly look on from My dwelling place, like shimmering heat in the sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.”

¹⁴This is what the Lord says: “The products of Egypt and the merchandise of Cush, along with the Sabeans, men of stature, will come over to you and will be yours; they will trudge behind you; they will come over in chains and bow down to you. They will confess to you: ‘God is indeed with you, and there is no other; there is no other God.’”

¹¹For My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place, incense and pure offerings will be presented in My name, because My name will be great among the nations,” says the Lord of Hosts.