A Message to Ethiopia

1Woe to you, ye wings of the land of ships, beyond the rivers of Ethiopia.

2He sends messengers by the sea, and paper letters on the water: for swift messengers shall go to a lofty nation, and to a strange and harsh people. Who is beyond it? a nation not looked for, and trodden down.

3Now all the rivers of the land shall be inhabited as an inhabited country; their land shall be as when a signal is raised from a mountain; it shall be audible as the sound of a trumpet.

4For thus said the Lord to me, There shall be security in my city, as the light of noonday heat, and it shall be as a cloud of dew in the day of harvest.

5Before the reaping time, when the flower has been completely formed, and the unripe grape has put forth its flower and blossomed, then shall he take away the little clusters with pruning-hooks, and shall take away the small branches, and cut them off;

6And he shall leave them together to the birds of the sky, and to the wild beasts of the earth: and the fowls of the sky shall be gathered upon them, and all the beasts of the land shall come upon him.

7In that time shall presents be brought to the Lord of hosts from a people afflicted and peeled, and from a people great from henceforth and for ever; a nation hoping and yet trodden down, which is in a part of a river of his land, to the place where is the name of the Lord of hosts, the mount Sion.