Isaiah 18:2 - Exposition

That sendeth ambassadors ; rather, perhaps, messengers , as the word is translated in Isaiah 57:9 and Proverbs 25:13 . They are sent, apparently, by the king to his own people. By the sea . "The sea" must in this place necessarily mean the Nile, which is called "the sea" in Nahum 3:8 certainly, and probably in Isaiah 19:5 . Vessels of papyrus could not possibly have been employed in the very difficult navigation of the Red Sea. Vessels of bulrushes . That some of the boats used upon the Nile were constructed of the papyrus (which is a sort of bulrush) we learn from Herodotus (2. 96), Theophrastus ('Hist. Plant.,' 4.9), Plutarch ('De Isid. et Osir.,' § 18), Pliny (Hist. 'Nat.,' 6.22), and Lucan ('Pharsal.,' 4.136). They are represented occasionally on the Egyptian monuments. Saying . This word is interpolated by our translators, and gives a wrong sense. It is the prophet that addresses the messengers, not the king who sends them. To a nation scattered and peeled ; rather, tall and polished , or tall and sleek . The word translated "scattered" means properly "drawn out," and seems to be applied here to the physique of the Ethiopians, whose stature is said to have been remarkable. The other epithet refers to the glossy skin of the people. A people terrible from their beginning hitherto ; The Israelites first knew the Ethiopians as soldiers when they formed a part of the army brought by Shishak (Sheshonk I.) against Rehoboam, about B.C. 970 ( 2 Chronicles 12:3 ). They had afterwards experience of their vast numbers, when Zerah made his attack upon Asa; but on this occasion they succeeded in defeating them ( 2 Chronicles 14:9-13 ). It was not till about two centuries after this that the power of Ethiopia began to be really formidable to Egypt; and the "miserable Cushites," as they had been in the habit of calling them, acquired the preponderating influence in the valley of the Nile, and under Piankhi, Shabak, Shabatek, and Tirhakah (Tahark), reduced Egypt to subjection. Isaiah, perhaps, refers to their rise under Piankhi as "their beginning." A nation meted out and trodden down ; rather, a nation of meting out and trampling ; i.e. one accustomed to mete out its neighbors' bounds with a measuring-line, and to trample other nations under its feet. Whose land the rivers have spoiled ; rather, whose land rivers despoil . The deposit of mud, which fertilizes Egypt, is washed by the rivers from Ethiopia, which is thus continually losing large quantities of rich son. This fact was well known to the Greeks (Herod; 2.12, ad fin .), and there is no reason why Isaiah should not have been acquainted with it.