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Isaiah 18:6
ESV They shall all of them be left to the birds of prey of the mountains and to the beasts of the earth. And the birds of prey will summer on them, and all the beasts of the earth will winter on them.
NIV They will all be left to the mountain birds of prey and to the wild animals; the birds will feed on them all summer, the wild animals all winter.
NASB They will be left together for mountain birds of prey, And for the animals of the earth; And the birds of prey will spend the summer feeding on them, And all the animals of the earth will spend harvest time on them.
CSB They will all be left for the birds of prey on the hills and for the wild animals of the land. The birds of prey will spend the summer feeding on them, and all the wild animals the winter.
NLT Your mighty army will be left dead in the fields for the mountain vultures and wild animals. The vultures will tear at the corpses all summer. The wild animals will gnaw at the bones all winter.
KJV 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.
NKJV They will be left together for the mountain birds of prey And for the beasts of the earth; The birds of prey will summer on them, And all the beasts of the earth will winter on them.

What does Isaiah 18:6 mean?

Isaiah has described the nations of the world waiting for God to act against the relentless Assyrian Empire, which has brought death and suffering to the world. He has described the Lord waiting for the precise moment to "prune" the Assyrians away, and that moment had not yet come (Isaiah 18:3–4).

Here, the metaphor of pruned branches (Isaiah 18:5) transforms into the grisly picture of dead corpses. There will be so many bodies that the birds of prey and predators on the ground will feast on them. The birds will have food all summer long, and the beasts will not go hungry that winter. The prophet assures all who hear him that this moment will come. When the Lord is finished using the Assyrians to bring judgment on His people Israel and other nations, He will turn and end their reign of terror on earth (Isaiah 10:12, 25).

The scene Isaiah pictures here—endless piles of bodies feeding wild animals—likely points forward to a specific moment in time. Lead by the fearsome Sennacherib, the Assyrians will lay siege to Jerusalem. The people in the city will have little hope of survival. That's when the time will be right for the Lord's judgement on Assyria. The angel of the Lord will kill thousands upon thousands of their soldiers in one night. This signals the beginning of the end for their dominance in the region (Isaiah 37:36–38).
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