Woe to the land that has the whirring of wings for its music, there beyond the Ethiop rivers!

In skiffs of papyrus reed she sends her ambassadors to the sea-coast! Ay, speed on your errand, but to a people far away, sundered from you by leagues of travel, dreaded people at the end of the earth, race that bears a tyrant’s yoke, in a land that is all rivers like your own.✻

All you peoples of the world, all you that dwell on earth, wait till you see the signal raised on the mountains, till you hear the trumpet sound.

Such warning the Lord has given me: I will keep silent and watch, here in my dwelling-place, as still as the bright sunshine of noon-day, or the haze that comes with the dew in harvest-time.

What a blossoming was here before the time of harvest, how fully formed the buds that were still ripening! But its boughs shall be cut back with the pruning-knife, its straying tendrils shall be torn off and thrown away.

All alike will be left a prey to the mountain birds, and the beasts that roam through the land; all through summer the birds will hover about it,✻ and the beasts flock to it in winter.

And then the people that is sundered far away, dreaded nation at the ends of the earth, land of the tyrant’s yoke, land of the branching rivers, will bring gifts to the Lord of hosts, betaking itself to mount Sion, where the name of the Lord of hosts is worshipped.