Isaiah Chapter 18

From The Open Bible Project

18:1 Ah, the land of the rustling of wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia;

• (a) He means that part of Ethiopia which lies toward the sea, which was so full of ships that the sails (which he compares to wings) seemed to shadow the sea.

18:2 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!"

• (b) Which is those countries were great, so much so that they made ships from them for swiftness.
• (c) This may be taken that they sent others to comfort the Jews and to promise them help against their enemies, and so the Lord threatened to take away their strength, that the Jews should not trust in it: or that they solicited the Egyptians and promised them aid to go against Judah.
• (d) That is, the Jews who because of God’s plague made all other nations afraid of the same, as God threatened in (Deuteronomy 28:37).
• (e) Meaning the Assyrians, (Isaiah 8:7).

18:3 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!

• (f) When the Lord prepared to fight against the Ethiopians.

18:4 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."

• (g) I will stay a while from punishing the wicked.
• (h) Which two seasons are profitable for the ripening of fruit, by which he means that he will seem to favour them and give them abundance for a time, but he will suddenly cut them off.

18:5 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.

18:6 They will be left together for the ravenous birds of the mountains, and for the animals of the earth. The ravenous birds will summer on them, and all the animals of the earth will winter on them.

• (i) Not only men will contemn them, but the brute beast.

18:7 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.

• (k) Meaning that God will pity his Church, and receive that little remnant as an offering to himself.