Chapter Eighteen

1–7. The danger threatening Ethiopia and the salvation of Ethiopia.

Isa 18:1-7. As if foreseeing impending danger, the Ethiopians send envoys to Judea for the conclusion of a defensive alliance, but the prophet advises his fellow citizens to send these envoys back. The Assyrians – whom the prophet means by the enemies of Ethiopia – will humble this mighty people, although they themselves will be struck by God at the moment of the highest tension of their military activity. This latter circumstance will cause the Ethiopians to recognize the power of the true God.

Isaiah 18:1. Woe to the land of rustling wings beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, Isaiah 7:18. “Woe to the land.” In translation from the Hebrew text: “O, land filled with the sound of wings!” Ethiopia is so called because it always had very many flies. Especially famous is the fly called Tsetse, which the prophet hints at with the expression zilzal here (cf. Is.7:18). “Rivers of Ethiopia” – in Hebrew naharei chusch. Ethiopia or Cush (see Commentary, vol. 2, p. 514) was located south of Egypt. Its borders were rivers: the Nile, Astaboras, and Astapus. Therefore, to the prophet, an inhabitant of Palestine lying north of Egypt, Ethiopia appeared as a country lying beyond these rivers. The Ethiopian kings in the time of Isaiah conquered Upper Egypt and sought to subjugate even Lower Egypt, and then to extend their conquests to Asia, which necessarily meant they would come into conflict with Assyria.

Isaiah 18:2. That sends ambassadors by the sea, even in papyrus vessels upon the waters! Go, swift messengers, to a nation tall and smooth, to a people feared from their beginning, to a mighty and conquering nation, whose land the rivers divide. “That sends ambassadors.” The Ethiopian king Tirhakah, as can be seen from the chronicles of the Assyrian king Sennacherib, sent ambassadors to the Philistines and Jews for the purpose of proposing an alliance against Assyria. “By the sea.” The Egyptians called the Nile river “the sea,” as did the Greek writers who gave the great river the name ωχεανος. And today the White and Blue Nile are called “seas.” The capital of Tirhakah’s reign, the city of Napata, was located on the Nile river, at the fourth cataract of this river, where the Nile receives many tributaries. “In papyrus.” These are the lightest vessels made from Egyptian reed, which now no longer grows in Egypt, but has remained only in Abyssinia (cf. Job 8:11; Job 9:26). “Go.” The prophet sends these Ethiopian ambassadors back, indicating thereby that Judea, protected by the Almighty Himself, does not need an alliance with the Ethiopian king and his people, although this people is “strong and good” (in translation from Hebrew – tall and with shining skin), “feared from their beginning” (in Hebrew: “dreaded even from afar”), “tall” (in Hebrew: “lord” – kav kav) and “all-conquering” (that is, mighty) a conqueror, as it became known from the time of King Piankhi’s reign, that is, from 766 BC. “Whose land the rivers divide” – that is, numerous canals.

Isaiah 18:3. All you inhabitants of the world and dwellers on the earth! When a banner is raised on the mountains, see it; and when a trumpet is sounded, hear it! The prophet calls all the peoples of the earth to watch carefully what the Lord will do to punish the Assyrians, who have caused so much evil to all peoples. About this defeat awaiting the Assyrians, all will be informed as if by certain military signals.

Isaiah 18:4. For thus the Lord said to me: I will be quiet and look on from my dwelling place, like clear heat upon the light, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest. The Lord revealed to the prophet that until the time He has appointed, He will not intervene in the affairs of Assyria. He even, it would seem, causes Assyria to reach the extreme limits of its violence against other states, just as the sun’s heat and dew cause the grain to ripen.

Isaiah 18:5. For before the harvest, when the bud is complete, and the sour grape ripens into a ripe grape, He will cut off the branches with a pruning hook, and will tear away and cut down the tendrils. Isaiah 18:6. All of them will be left to the birds of prey of the mountains and to the beasts of the earth; and the birds will summer upon them, and all the beasts of the earth will winter upon them. But the Lord will completely unexpectedly crush Assyria’s might. When the grape is already beginning to ripen, the Lord will cut with a sickle all the grape vines, and everything that remains from the rich vineyard will be left for the use of birds of prey and beasts, which will settle in this former vineyard. In this way is symbolically depicted the fall of the Assyrian state.

Isaiah 18:7. At that time a present will be brought to the Lord of hosts from a mighty and conquering people, from a people feared from their beginning, from a tall and all-conquering nation, whose land the rivers divide, to the place of the name of the Lord of hosts, to Mount Zion. The Ethiopians will see in the defeat of Assyria a miracle of the Almighty’s power and will send gifts – offerings to His temple in Jerusalem. “To the place of the name” – that is, to where the Lord especially displays His might. Special Notes. The prophecy concerning Ethiopia was probably uttered by the prophet around 702 BC, when the expedition of Sennacherib against Palestine was being prepared. From chapters 30 and 31 of the book of the prophet Isaiah we learn that in Jerusalem at that time there were strong hopes for help from Egypt, and it is very possible that in chapter 18 the prophet has in mind precisely the embassy of the Ethiopian and Egyptian king Tirhakah to Hezekiah, which was to persuade Hezekiah to continue resistance to the Assyrians. The entire chapter 18 can be divided into two strophes – the first will embrace the first three verses, the second – verses 4–6. Verse 7 more closely approaches prose speech. The strophes in the prophecy are asymmetrical (2, 3 and 2, 2, 2).