Fathers

Isaiah 18

Tap a verse to read the Fathers. Press and hold, then drag, to make a card.

Ah, the land of the rustling of wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia; that 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!” All 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! For 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.” For 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. They will be left together for the ravenous birds of the mountains, and for the animals of the earth. The ravenous birds will eat them in the summer, and all the animals of the earth will eat them in the winter. In 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.

About · Privacy · Credits · Support VRSZ

What the Fathers say

Isaiah 18:5

Western Saints

Jerome

For before the harvest it had flowered entirely, and immature perfection had sprouted, and its small branches will be cut with sickles, and whatever has been left behind will be cut off and shaken off. And they will be left with the birds of the mountains and the animals of the earth, and they will have perpetual summer over them, and all the animals of the earth will winter upon it. …

Commentary on Isaiah ↗

Thomas Aquinas

Third, where it says, before the harvest, he describes a metaphor of the punishment, namely through the destruction of fruit in the field, and he sets out three things. First, as to the ruin of the fruit which is ruined in the flower, when it begins to flower too quickly, for before the harvest it was all flourishing; similarly, before Egypt had power, it showed the flower of its glory: concerning which it says below: all the glory thereof as the flower of the field (Isa 40:6). …

Commentary on Isaiah ↗