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.
Parallel Translations
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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.
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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.
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They shall be left together unto the ravenous birds of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth; and the ravenous birds shall summer upon them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them.
Cross-references (8)
Passages linked to Isaiah 18:6 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Jeremiah 7:33 The dead bodies of this people will be food for the birds of the sky, and for the animals of the earth. No one will frighten them away.
- Ezekiel 32:4-6 I will leave you on the land. I will cast you out on the open field, and will cause all the birds of the sky to settle on you. I will satisfy the animals of the whole earth with you. I will lay your flesh on the mountains, and fill the valleys with your height. I will also water the land in which you swim with your blood, even to the mountains. The watercourses will be full of you.
- Ezekiel 39:17-20 “You, son of man, the Lord Yahweh says: ‘Speak to the birds of every sort, and to every animal of the field, “Assemble yourselves, and come; gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that I sacrifice for you, even a great sacrifice on the mountains of Israel, that you may eat meat and drink blood. You shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bulls, all of them fatlings of Bashan. You shall eat fat until you are full, and drink blood until you are drunk, of my sacrifice which I have sacrificed for you. You shall be filled at my table with horses and chariots, with mighty men, and with all men of war,” says the Lord Yahweh.’
- Isaiah 14:19 But you are cast away from your tomb like an abominable branch, clothed with the slain, who are thrust through with the sword, who go down to the stones of the pit; like a dead body trodden under foot.
- Isaiah 34:1-7 Come near, you nations, to hear! Listen, you peoples. Let the earth and all it contains hear, the world, and everything that comes from it. For Yahweh is enraged against all the nations, and angry with all their armies. He has utterly destroyed them. He has given them over for slaughter. Their slain will also be cast out, and the stench of their dead bodies will come up. The mountains will melt in their blood. All of the army of the sky will be dissolved. The sky will be rolled up like a scroll, and all its armies will fade away, as a leaf fades from off a vine or a fig tree. For my sword has drunk its fill in the sky. Behold, it will come down on Edom, and on the people of my curse, for judgment. Yahweh’s sword is filled with blood. It is covered with fat, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams; for Yahweh has a sacrifice in Bozrah, And a great slaughter in the land of Edom. The wild oxen will come down with them, and the young bulls with the mighty bulls; and their land will be drunken with blood, and their dust made greasy with fat.
- Isaiah 56:9 All you animals of the field, come to devour, all you animals in the forest.
- Jeremiah 15:3 “I will appoint over them four kinds,” says Yahweh: “the sword to kill, the dogs to tear, the birds of the sky, and the animals of the earth, to devour and to destroy.
- Revelation 19:17-18 I saw an angel standing in the sun. He cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in the sky, “Come! Be gathered together to the great supper of God, that you may eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them, and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, small and great.”
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (13 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain Not only men shall contemn them, but the brute…
Not only men shall contemn them, but the brute beasts.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Isa 18:6 They shall be left together unto the…
Isa 18:6 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.
Ver. 6. They shall be left together.] They, that is, the Assyrians slain by the angel. {as Psa 79:2 Isa 37:36}
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The fowls shall summer upon them.] Both birds and beasts of prey shall have enough to feed upon the whole year about.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain The sprigs and branches being cut down and thrown…
The sprigs and branches being cut down and thrown upon the ground, with the unripe grapes upon them, they shall lie upon the earth neglected by men, as being unripe, and unfit for their use, so that either birds or beasts may shelter themselves with them, or feed on them, both summer and winter. You are not to understand that the summer is appropriated to the fowls, and the winter to the beasts; but this is only an elegancy of the Hebrew language to use such distributions, of which we have many instances in prophetical writings.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain They shall be left, together unto the fowls of…
They shall be left, together unto the fowls of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth,.... That is, both sprigs and branches; with the fruit of them, which being unripe, are disregarded by men, but fed upon by birds and beasts; the fruits by the former, and the tender sprigs and green branches by the latter; signifying the destruction of the Ethiopians or Egyptians, and that the princes and the people should fall together, and lie unburied, and become a prey to birds and beasts; or the destruction of the Assyrian army slain by the angel, as Aben Ezra and others; though some interpret it of the army of Gog and Magog, as before observed; see Eze 39:17,
and the fowls shall summer upon them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them; not that the one should feed upon them in the summer time, and the other in the winter; the fowls in the summer time, when they fly in large flocks, and the beasts in the winter, when they go together in great numbers, as Kimchi; but the sense is, that the carnage should be so great, there would be sufficient for them both, all the year long.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Thy - The branches being cut down and thrown…
Thy - The branches being cut down and thrown upon the ground, with the unripe grapes upon them. Left - They shall lie upon the earth, so that either birds or beasts may shelter themselves with them, or feed on them, both summer and winter.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain They shall be left together - The figure here…
They shall be left together - The figure here is dropped, and the literal narration is resumed. The sense is, that the army shall be slain and left unburied. Perhaps the “branches and twigs” in the previous verse denoted military leaders, and the captains of the armies, which are now represented as becoming food for beasts of the field and for birds of prey.
To the fowls of the mountains - Their dead bodies shall be unburied, and shall be a prey to the birds that prey upon flesh.
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And to the beasts of the earth - The wild animals: the beasts of the forest.
And the fowls shall summer upon them - Shall pass the summer, that is, they shall continue to be unburied. “And the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them.” They shall be unburied through the winter; probably indicating that they would furnish food for the fowls and the wild beasts for a long time. On the multitude of carcasses these animals will find nourishment for a whole year, that is, they will spend the summer and the winter with them. When this was fulfilled, it is, perhaps, not possible to tell, as we are so little acquainted with the circumstances of the people in relation to whom it was spoken. If it related, as I suppose, to the people of Nubia or Ethiopia forming an alliance with the Assyrians for the purpose of invading Judea, it was fulfilled probably when Sennacherib and his assembled hosts were destroyed. Whenever it was fulfilled, it is quite evident that the design of the prophecy was to give comfort to the Jews, alarmed and agitated as they were at the prospect of the preparations which were made, by the assurance that those plans would fail, and all the efforts of their enemies be foiled and disconcerted.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Them. Their bodies shall lie unburied.
Them. Their bodies shall lie unburied.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain birds . . . beasts--transition from the image "sprigs,"…
birds . . . beasts--transition from the image "sprigs," "branches," to the thing meant: the Assyrian soldiers and leaders shall be the prey of birds and beasts, the whole year through, "winter" and "summer," so numerous shall be their carcasses. HORSLEY translates the Hebrew which is singular: "upon it," not "upon them"; the "it" refers to God's "dwelling-place" (Isa 18:4) in the Holy Land, which Antichrist ("the bird of prey" with the "beasts," his rebel hosts) is to possess himself of, and where he is to perish.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 6. They… be left — The branches cut off…
6. They… be left — The branches cut off for the fowls and beasts represent the carcasses of the enemy laid prostrate on the field, as the Assyrians were arrested in their march against Egypt. Both Judah is saved, and Egypt and Ethiopia are relieved from the dreaded foe. This is the message the Ethiopian ambassadors of Isa_18:2 were summoned to send off to their country. The message relates to the destruction of the enemy, and said destruction was a marked wonder, worthy to be known at the farthest places of the earth. For the enemy just ready to pounce upon the Egyptians, and with them upon Judah also, was itself pounced upon by the Almighty One. This event is the ensign on the mountains, and the trumpet sound (Isa_18:3) to which the prophet invites Ethiopia’s attention. The mustering of their hosts in self-defence is not now necessary. God has come to their defence, but chiefly in behalf of his people in Judah.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 6. The figure is now abandoned; instead of the…
6. The figure is now abandoned; instead of the “sprigs and branches” of the vine, we have the dead bodies of the Assyrian soldiers left as carrion for unclean beasts and birds, summer … winter] a whole year. The idea is amplified, with somewhat gruesome details, in Eze_39:11 ff.; cf. also Jer_7:33; 1Sa_17:46; 2Sa_21:10.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (6) They shall be left together unto the fowls…
(6) They shall be left together unto the fowls of the mountains . . .—The figure and the reality are strangely blended. The grapes of that vintage cut off by those pruning-hooks are none other than the carcases of the host of the Assyrians left unburied, to be devoured by the dogs and vultures.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain They shall be left together unto the fowls. At…
They shall be left together unto the fowls. At length imagery is dropped. The vine is shown to be an army, slaughtered all "together," and left a prey to kites and vultures, jackals and hyaenas. Shall summer... shall winter . They will furnish food to the beasts and birds of prey for the remainder of the year.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 They will be left together
They will be left together
God seems to change from telling the parable to speaking more directly about the nation. This can be stated clearly. AT: "Those who are killed will be left together" or "Like branches that are cut off and thrown away, the bodies of those who are killed will be left on the ground" (See: Parables)
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The birds will summer on them
"The birds will eat them during the summer." The word "birds" refers to birds that eat the flesh of dead bodies.
all the animals of the earth
"all kinds of wild animals"
will winter on them
"will eat them in the winter"
a people tall and smooth ... a people feared far and near ... a nation strong and trampling down, whose land the rivers divide
These phrases all describe the people of one nation. See how you translated these phrases in Isaiah 18:2.
a people tall and smooth
"a people who are tall and have smooth skin"
a people feared far and near
The words "far" and "near" are used together to mean "everywhere." AT: "a people who are feared everywhere" or "a people that everyone in the earth fears" (See: Merism)
a nation strong and trampling down
Trampling down represents conquering other nations. AT: "a nation that is strong and conquers other nations" (See: Metonymy)
to the place of the name of Yahweh of hosts, to Mount Zion
The word "name" refers to Yahweh. AT: "to Mount Zion, where Yahweh of hosts dwells" (See: Metonymy)
translationWords
tribute
Yahweh of hosts
people group
fear
nation
name
Zion
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.