Cush's Envoys Hear of a Harvest Cut and a Gift to Zion

A land of whirring wings sends papyrus boats, and the whole earth is told to watch

Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia: 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!

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. Cush's envoys and a formidable, river-divided people fill an enigmatic scene. The oracle is not a racial portrait and not a map onto modern East African or any other living peoples.

The LORD is still in the heat, then pruning time feeds birds and beasts, then a gift arrives at Zion

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. 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. 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.

In that time shall the present be brought unto the LORD of hosts of a people scattered and peeled... to the place of the name of the LORD of hosts, the mount Zion. Divine stillness is not inaction; it is waiting until the cut. Carrion on pruned shoots is imperial harvest interrupted. The later gift to Zion is homage from that people, not colonial tribute to copy, and not a warrant to spoil a nation meted out.