The Oracle Against Damascus, the Fading Glory of Jacob, and the Rebuke of the Raging Nations

Isa 17:4-8 Second turn: “And it comes to pass in that day, the glory of Jacob wastes away, and the fat of his flesh grows thin. And it will be as when a reaper grasps the stalks of wheat, and his arm mows off the ears; and it will be as with one who gathers together ears in the valley of Rephaim. Yet a gleaning remains from it, as at the olive-beating: two, three berries high up at the top; four, five in its, the fruit tree’s, branches, saith Jehovah the God of Israel.

At that day will man look up to his Creator, and his eyes will look to the Holy One of Israel. And he will not look to the altars, the work of his hands; and what his fingers have made he will not regard, neither the Astartes nor the sun-gods. ” This second turn does not speak of Damascus, but simply of Israel, and in fact of all Israel, the range of vision widening out from Israel in the more restricted sense, so as to embrace the whole.

It will all disappear, with the exception of a small remnant; but the latter will return. Thus “a remnant will return,” the law of Israel’s history, which is here shown first of all in its threatening aspect, and then in its more promising one. The reputation and prosperity to which the two kingdoms were raised by Jeroboam II and Uzziah would pass away. Israel was ripe for judgment, like a field of corn for the harvest; and it would be as when a reaper grasps the stalks that have shot up, and cuts off the ears.

קציר is not used elliptically for קציר אישׁ (Gesenius), nor is it a definition of time (Luzzatto), nor an accusative of the object (Knobel), but a noun formed like נביא, פליל, פריץ, and used in the sense of reaper ( kōtzēr in other cases). The figure suggested here is more fully expanded in John 4 and Rev 14. Hardly a single one will escape the judgment: just as in the broad plain of Rephaim, which slopes off to the south-west of Jerusalem as far as Bethlehem, where it is covered with rich fields of wheat, the collectors of ears leave only one or two ears lying scattered here and there.

Nevertheless a gleaning of Israel (“in it,” viz. , in Jacob, Isa 17:4; Isa 10:22) will be left, just as when the branches of the olive tree, which have been already cleared with the hand, are still further shaken with a stick, there still remain a few olives upon the highest branch (two, three; cf. , 2Ki 9:32), or concealed under the foliage of the branches.

“ Its , the fruit tree's , branches :” this is an elegant expression, as, for example, in Pro 14:13; the carrying over of the ה to the second word is very natural in both passages (see Ges. §121, b ). This small remnant will turn with stedfast gaze to the living God, as is becoming in man as such ( hâ'âdâm ), and not regard the idols as worthy of any look at all, at least of any reverential look.

As hammânim are here images of the sun-god חמן בעל, which is well known from the Phoenician monuments, 'ashērim (for which we find, though more rarely, 'ashēroth ) apparently signifies images of the moon-goddess. And the combination of “Baal, Asherah, and all the host of heaven” in 2Ki 23:4, as well as the surname “queen of heaven” in Jer 7:18; Jer 44:18-19, appears to require this (Knobel).

But the latest researches have proved that 'Ashērâh is rather the Semitic Aphrodite, and therefore the planet Venus, which was called the “little luck” ( es - sa‛d el - as'gar ) by the Arabs, in distinction from Musteri (Jupiter), or “the great luck. ” And with this the name 'Asherah the “lucky” (i. e. , the source of luck or prosperity) and the similar surname given to the Assyrian Istar agree; for 'Asherah is the very same goddess as 'Ashtoreth , whose name is thoroughly Arian, and apparently signifies the star (Ved.

stir = star ; Zend. stare ; Neo-Pers. sitâre , used chiefly for the morning star), although Rawlinson (without being able to suggest any more acceptable interpretation) speaks of this view as “not worthy of much attention. ” Thus Asherim is used to signify the bosquets (shrubberies) or trees dedicated to the Semitic Aphrodite (Deu 16:21; compare the verbs used to signify their removal, גדע, כרת, נתשׁ); but here it probably refers to her statues or images (2Ki 21:7; compare the miphletzeth in 1Ki 15:13, which is used to denote an obscene exhibition).

For these images of the sun-god and of the goddess of the morning star, the remnant of Israel, that has been purified by the smelting furnace of judgment, has no longer any eye. Its looks are exclusively directed to the one true God of man. The promise, which here begins to dawn at the close of the second turn, is hidden again in the third, though only to break forth again in the fourth with double or triple intensity.

Isa 17:4-8 Second turn: “And it comes to pass in that day, the glory of Jacob wastes away, and the fat of his flesh grows thin. And it will be as when a reaper grasps the stalks of wheat, and his arm mows off the ears; and it will be as with one who gathers together ears in the valley of Rephaim. Yet a gleaning remains from it, as at the olive-beating: two, three berries high up at the top; four, five in its, the fruit tree’s, branches, saith Jehovah the God of Israel.

At that day will man look up to his Creator, and his eyes will look to the Holy One of Israel. And he will not look to the altars, the work of his hands; and what his fingers have made he will not regard, neither the Astartes nor the sun-gods. ” This second turn does not speak of Damascus, but simply of Israel, and in fact of all Israel, the range of vision widening out from Israel in the more restricted sense, so as to embrace the whole.

It will all disappear, with the exception of a small remnant; but the latter will return. Thus “a remnant will return,” the law of Israel’s history, which is here shown first of all in its threatening aspect, and then in its more promising one. The reputation and prosperity to which the two kingdoms were raised by Jeroboam II and Uzziah would pass away. Israel was ripe for judgment, like a field of corn for the harvest; and it would be as when a reaper grasps the stalks that have shot up, and cuts off the ears.

קציר is not used elliptically for קציר אישׁ (Gesenius), nor is it a definition of time (Luzzatto), nor an accusative of the object (Knobel), but a noun formed like נביא, פליל, פריץ, and used in the sense of reaper ( kōtzēr in other cases). The figure suggested here is more fully expanded in John 4 and Rev 14. Hardly a single one will escape the judgment: just as in the broad plain of Rephaim, which slopes off to the south-west of Jerusalem as far as Bethlehem, where it is covered with rich fields of wheat, the collectors of ears leave only one or two ears lying scattered here and there.

Nevertheless a gleaning of Israel (“in it,” viz. , in Jacob, Isa 17:4; Isa 10:22) will be left, just as when the branches of the olive tree, which have been already cleared with the hand, are still further shaken with a stick, there still remain a few olives upon the highest branch (two, three; cf. , 2Ki 9:32), or concealed under the foliage of the branches.

“ Its , the fruit tree's , branches :” this is an elegant expression, as, for example, in Pro 14:13; the carrying over of the ה to the second word is very natural in both passages (see Ges. §121, b ). This small remnant will turn with stedfast gaze to the living God, as is becoming in man as such ( hâ'âdâm ), and not regard the idols as worthy of any look at all, at least of any reverential look.

As hammânim are here images of the sun-god חמן בעל, which is well known from the Phoenician monuments, 'ashērim (for which we find, though more rarely, 'ashēroth ) apparently signifies images of the moon-goddess. And the combination of “Baal, Asherah, and all the host of heaven” in 2Ki 23:4, as well as the surname “queen of heaven” in Jer 7:18; Jer 44:18-19, appears to require this (Knobel).

But the latest researches have proved that 'Ashērâh is rather the Semitic Aphrodite, and therefore the planet Venus, which was called the “little luck” ( es - sa‛d el - as'gar ) by the Arabs, in distinction from Musteri (Jupiter), or “the great luck. ” And with this the name 'Asherah the “lucky” (i. e. , the source of luck or prosperity) and the similar surname given to the Assyrian Istar agree; for 'Asherah is the very same goddess as 'Ashtoreth , whose name is thoroughly Arian, and apparently signifies the star (Ved.

stir = star ; Zend. stare ; Neo-Pers. sitâre , used chiefly for the morning star), although Rawlinson (without being able to suggest any more acceptable interpretation) speaks of this view as “not worthy of much attention. ” Thus Asherim is used to signify the bosquets (shrubberies) or trees dedicated to the Semitic Aphrodite (Deu 16:21; compare the verbs used to signify their removal, גדע, כרת, נתשׁ); but here it probably refers to her statues or images (2Ki 21:7; compare the miphletzeth in 1Ki 15:13, which is used to denote an obscene exhibition).

For these images of the sun-god and of the goddess of the morning star, the remnant of Israel, that has been purified by the smelting furnace of judgment, has no longer any eye. Its looks are exclusively directed to the one true God of man. The promise, which here begins to dawn at the close of the second turn, is hidden again in the third, though only to break forth again in the fourth with double or triple intensity.

Isa 17:4-8 Second turn: “And it comes to pass in that day, the glory of Jacob wastes away, and the fat of his flesh grows thin. And it will be as when a reaper grasps the stalks of wheat, and his arm mows off the ears; and it will be as with one who gathers together ears in the valley of Rephaim. Yet a gleaning remains from it, as at the olive-beating: two, three berries high up at the top; four, five in its, the fruit tree’s, branches, saith Jehovah the God of Israel.

At that day will man look up to his Creator, and his eyes will look to the Holy One of Israel. And he will not look to the altars, the work of his hands; and what his fingers have made he will not regard, neither the Astartes nor the sun-gods. ” This second turn does not speak of Damascus, but simply of Israel, and in fact of all Israel, the range of vision widening out from Israel in the more restricted sense, so as to embrace the whole.

It will all disappear, with the exception of a small remnant; but the latter will return. Thus “a remnant will return,” the law of Israel’s history, which is here shown first of all in its threatening aspect, and then in its more promising one. The reputation and prosperity to which the two kingdoms were raised by Jeroboam II and Uzziah would pass away. Israel was ripe for judgment, like a field of corn for the harvest; and it would be as when a reaper grasps the stalks that have shot up, and cuts off the ears.

קציר is not used elliptically for קציר אישׁ (Gesenius), nor is it a definition of time (Luzzatto), nor an accusative of the object (Knobel), but a noun formed like נביא, פליל, פריץ, and used in the sense of reaper ( kōtzēr in other cases). The figure suggested here is more fully expanded in John 4 and Rev 14. Hardly a single one will escape the judgment: just as in the broad plain of Rephaim, which slopes off to the south-west of Jerusalem as far as Bethlehem, where it is covered with rich fields of wheat, the collectors of ears leave only one or two ears lying scattered here and there.

Nevertheless a gleaning of Israel (“in it,” viz. , in Jacob, Isa 17:4; Isa 10:22) will be left, just as when the branches of the olive tree, which have been already cleared with the hand, are still further shaken with a stick, there still remain a few olives upon the highest branch (two, three; cf. , 2Ki 9:32), or concealed under the foliage of the branches.

“ Its , the fruit tree's , branches :” this is an elegant expression, as, for example, in Pro 14:13; the carrying over of the ה to the second word is very natural in both passages (see Ges. §121, b ). This small remnant will turn with stedfast gaze to the living God, as is becoming in man as such ( hâ'âdâm ), and not regard the idols as worthy of any look at all, at least of any reverential look.

As hammânim are here images of the sun-god חמן בעל, which is well known from the Phoenician monuments, 'ashērim (for which we find, though more rarely, 'ashēroth ) apparently signifies images of the moon-goddess. And the combination of “Baal, Asherah, and all the host of heaven” in 2Ki 23:4, as well as the surname “queen of heaven” in Jer 7:18; Jer 44:18-19, appears to require this (Knobel).

But the latest researches have proved that 'Ashērâh is rather the Semitic Aphrodite, and therefore the planet Venus, which was called the “little luck” ( es - sa‛d el - as'gar ) by the Arabs, in distinction from Musteri (Jupiter), or “the great luck. ” And with this the name 'Asherah the “lucky” (i. e. , the source of luck or prosperity) and the similar surname given to the Assyrian Istar agree; for 'Asherah is the very same goddess as 'Ashtoreth , whose name is thoroughly Arian, and apparently signifies the star (Ved.

stir = star ; Zend. stare ; Neo-Pers. sitâre , used chiefly for the morning star), although Rawlinson (without being able to suggest any more acceptable interpretation) speaks of this view as “not worthy of much attention. ” Thus Asherim is used to signify the bosquets (shrubberies) or trees dedicated to the Semitic Aphrodite (Deu 16:21; compare the verbs used to signify their removal, גדע, כרת, נתשׁ); but here it probably refers to her statues or images (2Ki 21:7; compare the miphletzeth in 1Ki 15:13, which is used to denote an obscene exhibition).

For these images of the sun-god and of the goddess of the morning star, the remnant of Israel, that has been purified by the smelting furnace of judgment, has no longer any eye. Its looks are exclusively directed to the one true God of man. The promise, which here begins to dawn at the close of the second turn, is hidden again in the third, though only to break forth again in the fourth with double or triple intensity.

Isa 17:9-11 Third turn: “In that day will his fortified cities be like the ruins of the forest and of the mountain top, which they cleared before the sons of Israel: and there arises a waste place. For thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not thought of the Rock of thy stronghold, therefore thou plantedst charming plantations, and didst set them with strange vines.

In the day that thou plantedst, thou didst make a fence; and with the morning dawn thou madest thy sowing to blossom: a harvest heap in the day of deep wounds and deadly sorrow of heart. ” The statement in Isa 17:3, “The fortress of Ephraim is abolished,” is repeated in Isa 17:9 in a more descriptive manner. The fate of the strongly fortified cities of Ephraim would be the same as that of the old Canaanitish castles, which were still to be discerned in their antiquated remains, either in the depths of forests or high up on the mountains.

The word ‛azubâh , which the early translators quite misunderstood, signifies, both here and in Isa 6:12, desolate places that have gone to ruin. They also misunderstood והאמיר הסהרשׁ. The Septuagint renders it, by a bold conjecture, οἱ Αμοῤῥηαῖοι καὶ οὶ Εὐαῖοι; but this is at once proved to be false by the inversion of the names of the two peoples, which was very properly thought to be necessary.

האמיר undoubtedly signifies the top of a tree, which is quite unsuitable here. But as even this meaning points back to אמר, extollere , efferre (see at Psa 94:4), it may also mean the mountain-top. The name hâ'emori (the Amorites: those who dwell high up in the mountains) proves the possibility of this; and the prophet had this name in his mind, and was guided by it in his choice of a word.

The subject of עזבוּ is self-evident. And the reason why only the ruins in forests and on mountains are mentioned is, that other places, which were situated on the different lines of traffic, merely changed their inhabitants when the land was taken by Israel. The reason why the fate of Ephraim’s fortified castles was the same as that of the Amoritish castles, which were then lying in ruins, was that Ephraim, as stated in Isa 17:10, had turned away from its true rocky stronghold, namely from Jehovah.

It was a consequence of this estrangement from God, that Ephraim planted נעמנים נטעי, plantations of the nature of pleasant things, or pleasant plantations (compare on Psa 78:49, and Ewald, §287, ab ), i. e. , cultivated all kinds of sensual accompaniments to its worship, in accordance with its heathen propensities; and sowed, or rather (as zemōrâh is the layer of a vine) “set,” this garden-ground, to which the suffix ennu refers, with strange grapes, by forming an alliance with a zâr (a stranger), namely the king of Damascus.

On the very day of the planting, Ephraim fenced it carefully (this is the meaning of the pilpel , sigsēg from שׂוּג = סוּג, not “to raise,” as no such verb as שׂוּג = שׂגה, סגא, can be shown to exist), that is to say, he ensured the perpetuity of these sensuous modes of worship as a state religion, with all the shrewdness of a Jeroboam (see Amo 7:13). And the very next morning he had brought into blossom what he had sown: the foreign layer had shot up like a hot-house plant, i.

e. , the alliance had speedily grown into a hearty agreement, and had already produced one blossom at any rate, viz. , the plan of a joint attack upon Judah. But this plantation, which was so flattering and promising for Israel, and which had succeeded so rapidly, and to all appearance so happily, was a harvest heap for the day of the judgment. Nearly all modern expositors have taken nēd as the third person (after the form mēth , Ges.

§72, Anm. 1), and render it “the harvest flees;” but the third person of נוּד would be נד, like the participle in Gen 4:12; whereas the meaning cumulus (a heap), which it has elsewhere as a substantive, is quite appropriate, and the statement of the prophet resembles that of the apostle in Rom 2:5. The day of the judgment is called “the day of נחלה” (or, according to another reading, נחלה), not, however, as equivalent to nachal , a stream (Luzzatto, in giorno di fiumana ), as in Psa 124:4 (the tone upon the last syllable proves this), nor in the sense of “in the day of possession,” as Rosenmüller and others suppose, since this necessarily gives to נד the former objectionable and (by the side of קציר) improbable verbal sense; but as the feminine of nachleh , written briefly for maccâh nachlâh (Jer 14:17), i.

e. , inasmuch as it inflicts grievous and mortal wounds. Ephraim’s plantation is a harvest heap for that day (compare kâtzir , the harvest of punishment, in Hos 6:11 and Jer 51:33); and the hope set upon this plantation is changed into אנוּשׁ כּאב, a desperate and incurable heartfelt sorrow (Jer 30:15). The organic connection between Isa 17:12-14, which follow, and the oracle concerning Damascus and Israel, has also been either entirely misunderstood, or not thoroughly appreciated.

The connection is the following: As the prophet sets before himself the manner in which the sin of Ephraim is punished by Asshur, as the latter sweeps over the Holy Land, the promise which already began to dawn in the second turn bursts completely through: the world-power is the instrument of punishment in the hands of Jehovah, but not for ever.

Isa 17:9-11 Third turn: “In that day will his fortified cities be like the ruins of the forest and of the mountain top, which they cleared before the sons of Israel: and there arises a waste place. For thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not thought of the Rock of thy stronghold, therefore thou plantedst charming plantations, and didst set them with strange vines.

In the day that thou plantedst, thou didst make a fence; and with the morning dawn thou madest thy sowing to blossom: a harvest heap in the day of deep wounds and deadly sorrow of heart. ” The statement in Isa 17:3, “The fortress of Ephraim is abolished,” is repeated in Isa 17:9 in a more descriptive manner. The fate of the strongly fortified cities of Ephraim would be the same as that of the old Canaanitish castles, which were still to be discerned in their antiquated remains, either in the depths of forests or high up on the mountains.

The word ‛azubâh , which the early translators quite misunderstood, signifies, both here and in Isa 6:12, desolate places that have gone to ruin. They also misunderstood והאמיר הסהרשׁ. The Septuagint renders it, by a bold conjecture, οἱ Αμοῤῥηαῖοι καὶ οὶ Εὐαῖοι; but this is at once proved to be false by the inversion of the names of the two peoples, which was very properly thought to be necessary.

האמיר undoubtedly signifies the top of a tree, which is quite unsuitable here. But as even this meaning points back to אמר, extollere , efferre (see at Psa 94:4), it may also mean the mountain-top. The name hâ'emori (the Amorites: those who dwell high up in the mountains) proves the possibility of this; and the prophet had this name in his mind, and was guided by it in his choice of a word.

The subject of עזבוּ is self-evident. And the reason why only the ruins in forests and on mountains are mentioned is, that other places, which were situated on the different lines of traffic, merely changed their inhabitants when the land was taken by Israel. The reason why the fate of Ephraim’s fortified castles was the same as that of the Amoritish castles, which were then lying in ruins, was that Ephraim, as stated in Isa 17:10, had turned away from its true rocky stronghold, namely from Jehovah.

It was a consequence of this estrangement from God, that Ephraim planted נעמנים נטעי, plantations of the nature of pleasant things, or pleasant plantations (compare on Psa 78:49, and Ewald, §287, ab ), i. e. , cultivated all kinds of sensual accompaniments to its worship, in accordance with its heathen propensities; and sowed, or rather (as zemōrâh is the layer of a vine) “set,” this garden-ground, to which the suffix ennu refers, with strange grapes, by forming an alliance with a zâr (a stranger), namely the king of Damascus.

On the very day of the planting, Ephraim fenced it carefully (this is the meaning of the pilpel , sigsēg from שׂוּג = סוּג, not “to raise,” as no such verb as שׂוּג = שׂגה, סגא, can be shown to exist), that is to say, he ensured the perpetuity of these sensuous modes of worship as a state religion, with all the shrewdness of a Jeroboam (see Amo 7:13). And the very next morning he had brought into blossom what he had sown: the foreign layer had shot up like a hot-house plant, i.

e. , the alliance had speedily grown into a hearty agreement, and had already produced one blossom at any rate, viz. , the plan of a joint attack upon Judah. But this plantation, which was so flattering and promising for Israel, and which had succeeded so rapidly, and to all appearance so happily, was a harvest heap for the day of the judgment. Nearly all modern expositors have taken nēd as the third person (after the form mēth , Ges.

§72, Anm. 1), and render it “the harvest flees;” but the third person of נוּד would be נד, like the participle in Gen 4:12; whereas the meaning cumulus (a heap), which it has elsewhere as a substantive, is quite appropriate, and the statement of the prophet resembles that of the apostle in Rom 2:5. The day of the judgment is called “the day of נחלה” (or, according to another reading, נחלה), not, however, as equivalent to nachal , a stream (Luzzatto, in giorno di fiumana ), as in Psa 124:4 (the tone upon the last syllable proves this), nor in the sense of “in the day of possession,” as Rosenmüller and others suppose, since this necessarily gives to נד the former objectionable and (by the side of קציר) improbable verbal sense; but as the feminine of nachleh , written briefly for maccâh nachlâh (Jer 14:17), i.

e. , inasmuch as it inflicts grievous and mortal wounds. Ephraim’s plantation is a harvest heap for that day (compare kâtzir , the harvest of punishment, in Hos 6:11 and Jer 51:33); and the hope set upon this plantation is changed into אנוּשׁ כּאב, a desperate and incurable heartfelt sorrow (Jer 30:15). The organic connection between Isa 17:12-14, which follow, and the oracle concerning Damascus and Israel, has also been either entirely misunderstood, or not thoroughly appreciated.

The connection is the following: As the prophet sets before himself the manner in which the sin of Ephraim is punished by Asshur, as the latter sweeps over the Holy Land, the promise which already began to dawn in the second turn bursts completely through: the world-power is the instrument of punishment in the hands of Jehovah, but not for ever.

Isa 17:9-11 Third turn: “In that day will his fortified cities be like the ruins of the forest and of the mountain top, which they cleared before the sons of Israel: and there arises a waste place. For thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation, and hast not thought of the Rock of thy stronghold, therefore thou plantedst charming plantations, and didst set them with strange vines.

In the day that thou plantedst, thou didst make a fence; and with the morning dawn thou madest thy sowing to blossom: a harvest heap in the day of deep wounds and deadly sorrow of heart. ” The statement in Isa 17:3, “The fortress of Ephraim is abolished,” is repeated in Isa 17:9 in a more descriptive manner. The fate of the strongly fortified cities of Ephraim would be the same as that of the old Canaanitish castles, which were still to be discerned in their antiquated remains, either in the depths of forests or high up on the mountains.

The word ‛azubâh , which the early translators quite misunderstood, signifies, both here and in Isa 6:12, desolate places that have gone to ruin. They also misunderstood והאמיר הסהרשׁ. The Septuagint renders it, by a bold conjecture, οἱ Αμοῤῥηαῖοι καὶ οὶ Εὐαῖοι; but this is at once proved to be false by the inversion of the names of the two peoples, which was very properly thought to be necessary.

האמיר undoubtedly signifies the top of a tree, which is quite unsuitable here. But as even this meaning points back to אמר, extollere , efferre (see at Psa 94:4), it may also mean the mountain-top. The name hâ'emori (the Amorites: those who dwell high up in the mountains) proves the possibility of this; and the prophet had this name in his mind, and was guided by it in his choice of a word.

The subject of עזבוּ is self-evident. And the reason why only the ruins in forests and on mountains are mentioned is, that other places, which were situated on the different lines of traffic, merely changed their inhabitants when the land was taken by Israel. The reason why the fate of Ephraim’s fortified castles was the same as that of the Amoritish castles, which were then lying in ruins, was that Ephraim, as stated in Isa 17:10, had turned away from its true rocky stronghold, namely from Jehovah.

It was a consequence of this estrangement from God, that Ephraim planted נעמנים נטעי, plantations of the nature of pleasant things, or pleasant plantations (compare on Psa 78:49, and Ewald, §287, ab ), i. e. , cultivated all kinds of sensual accompaniments to its worship, in accordance with its heathen propensities; and sowed, or rather (as zemōrâh is the layer of a vine) “set,” this garden-ground, to which the suffix ennu refers, with strange grapes, by forming an alliance with a zâr (a stranger), namely the king of Damascus.

On the very day of the planting, Ephraim fenced it carefully (this is the meaning of the pilpel , sigsēg from שׂוּג = סוּג, not “to raise,” as no such verb as שׂוּג = שׂגה, סגא, can be shown to exist), that is to say, he ensured the perpetuity of these sensuous modes of worship as a state religion, with all the shrewdness of a Jeroboam (see Amo 7:13). And the very next morning he had brought into blossom what he had sown: the foreign layer had shot up like a hot-house plant, i.

e. , the alliance had speedily grown into a hearty agreement, and had already produced one blossom at any rate, viz. , the plan of a joint attack upon Judah. But this plantation, which was so flattering and promising for Israel, and which had succeeded so rapidly, and to all appearance so happily, was a harvest heap for the day of the judgment. Nearly all modern expositors have taken nēd as the third person (after the form mēth , Ges.

§72, Anm. 1), and render it “the harvest flees;” but the third person of נוּד would be נד, like the participle in Gen 4:12; whereas the meaning cumulus (a heap), which it has elsewhere as a substantive, is quite appropriate, and the statement of the prophet resembles that of the apostle in Rom 2:5. The day of the judgment is called “the day of נחלה” (or, according to another reading, נחלה), not, however, as equivalent to nachal , a stream (Luzzatto, in giorno di fiumana ), as in Psa 124:4 (the tone upon the last syllable proves this), nor in the sense of “in the day of possession,” as Rosenmüller and others suppose, since this necessarily gives to נד the former objectionable and (by the side of קציר) improbable verbal sense; but as the feminine of nachleh , written briefly for maccâh nachlâh (Jer 14:17), i.

e. , inasmuch as it inflicts grievous and mortal wounds. Ephraim’s plantation is a harvest heap for that day (compare kâtzir , the harvest of punishment, in Hos 6:11 and Jer 51:33); and the hope set upon this plantation is changed into אנוּשׁ כּאב, a desperate and incurable heartfelt sorrow (Jer 30:15). The organic connection between Isa 17:12-14, which follow, and the oracle concerning Damascus and Israel, has also been either entirely misunderstood, or not thoroughly appreciated.

The connection is the following: As the prophet sets before himself the manner in which the sin of Ephraim is punished by Asshur, as the latter sweeps over the Holy Land, the promise which already began to dawn in the second turn bursts completely through: the world-power is the instrument of punishment in the hands of Jehovah, but not for ever.

Isa 17:12-14 Fourth turn: “Woe to the raoring of many nations: like the roaring of seas they roar; and to the rumbling of nations, like the rumbling of mighty waters they rumble! Nations, like the rumbling of many waters they rumble; and He threatens it: then it flies far away, and is chased like chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a cloud of dust before the gale.

At eventide, behold consternation; and before the morning dawn it is destroyed: this the portion of our plunderers, and the lot of our robbers. ” It is the destruction of Asshur that the prophet is predicting here (as in Isa 14:24-27; Isa 29:5-8, etc.) , though not of Asshur as Asshur, but of Asshur as the imperial kingdom, which embraced a multitude of nations (Isa 22:6; Isa 8:9, Isa 8:10; Isa 14:26; Isa 29:7, Isa 29:8) all gathered together under the rule of one will, to make a common attack upon the church of God.

The connection between this fourth turn and the third is precisely the same as between Isa 8:9, Isa 8:10, and Isa 8:6-8. The exclamation of woe ( hoi ) is an expression of pain, as in Isa 10:1; and this is followed by a proclamation of the judgment of wrath. The description of the rolling wave of nations is as pictorial as the well-known illi inter sese , etc.

, of the Cyclops in Virgil. “It spreads and stretches out, as if it would never cease to roll, and roar, and surge, and sweep onward in its course” (Drechsler). In the expression “it” ( bo ) in Isa 17:13, the many surging nations are kneaded together, as it were, into one mass. It costs God simply a threatening word; and this mass all flies apart ( mimmerchâk like mērâchōk , Isa 23:7), and falls into dust, and whirls about in all directions, like the chaff of threshing-floors in high situations, or like dust whirled up by the storm.

The judgment commences in the evening, and rages through the night; and before the morning dawns, the army of nations raised by the imperial power is all destroyed (compare Isa 29:7, Isa 29:8, and the fulfilment in Isa 37:36). The fact that the oracle concerning Damascus in its fourth stage takes so comprehensive and, so far as Israel is concerned, so promising a form, may be explained on the ground that Syria was the forerunner of Asshur in the attack upon Israel, and that the alliance between Israel and Syria became the occasion of the complications with Asshur.

If the substance of the massâ Dammesek (the oracle concerning Damascus) had been restricted to the prophecy contained in the name Mahershalal, the element of promise so characteristic of the prophecies against the nations of the world would be entirely wanting. But the shout of triumph, “This is the portion,” etc. , supplied a terminal point, beyond which the massa could not go without the sacrifice of its unity.

We are therefore warranted in regarding Isa 18:1-7 as an independent prophecy, notwithstanding its commencement, which apparently forms a continuation of the fourth strophe of Isa 17:1-14. Ethiopia’s Submission to Jehovah - Isa 18:1-7 The notion that Isa 18:4-6 contains an account of the judgment of Jehovah upon Ethiopia is quite an untenable one. The prophet is here predicting the destruction of the army of Sennacherib in his usual way, and in accordance with the actual fulfilment (Isa 37:36).

The view which Hofmann has adopted from the Jewish expositors - namely, that the people so strangely described at the commencement and close of the prophecy is the Israelitish nation - is equally untenable. It is Ethiopia. Taking both these facts together, then, the conclusion to which we are brought is, that the prophet is here foretelling the effect that will be produced upon Ethiopia by the judgment which Jehovah is about to inflict upon Asshur.

But it is altogether improbable either that the prophecy falls later than the Assyrian expedition against Egypt (as Schegg supposes), or that the Ethiopian ambassadors mentioned here are despatched to Judah to seek for friendship and aid (as Ewald, Knobel, Meier, and Thenius maintain). The expedition was still impending, and that against Judah was the means to this further end.

The ambassadors are not sent to Judah, but carry commands with the most stirring despatch to every province under Ethiopian rule. The Ethiopian kingdom is thrown into the greatest excitement in the face of the approaching Assyrian invasion, and the messengers are sent out to raise the militia. At that time both Egypts were governed by the Ethiopian (or twenty-fifth) dynasty, Sabako the Ethiopian having made himself master of the country on the Lower Nile.

The king of Egypt who was contemporaneous with Sennacherib was the Tirhaka of the Old Testament, the Tarakos of Manetho, and the Tearkon of Strabo - a great conqueror, according to Megasthenes, like Sesostris and Nebuchadnezzar, who had carried his conquests as far as the Pillars of Hercules (Strabo, xv 1, 6). This explains the strangely sounding description given in Isa 18:2, Isa 18:7 of the Ethiopian people, which had the universal reputation in antiquity of gigantic strength and invincibility.

It is impossible to determine the length of time that intervened between the composition of the prophecy and the fourteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign, in which the Assyrian army commenced the expedition across Judah to Egypt. The event which the prophecy foretells - namely, that the judgment of Jehovah upon Asshur would be followed by the submission of Ethiopia to Jehovah - was only partially and provisionally fulfilled (2Ch 32:23).

And there is nothing to surprise us in this, inasmuch as in the prophecies delivered before the destruction of Assyria the latter always presented itself to the mind of the prophet as the kingdom of the world; and consequently the prophecy had also an eschatological feature, which still remained for a future and remote fulfilment.

Isa 17:12-14 Fourth turn: “Woe to the raoring of many nations: like the roaring of seas they roar; and to the rumbling of nations, like the rumbling of mighty waters they rumble! Nations, like the rumbling of many waters they rumble; and He threatens it: then it flies far away, and is chased like chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a cloud of dust before the gale.

At eventide, behold consternation; and before the morning dawn it is destroyed: this the portion of our plunderers, and the lot of our robbers. ” It is the destruction of Asshur that the prophet is predicting here (as in Isa 14:24-27; Isa 29:5-8, etc.) , though not of Asshur as Asshur, but of Asshur as the imperial kingdom, which embraced a multitude of nations (Isa 22:6; Isa 8:9, Isa 8:10; Isa 14:26; Isa 29:7, Isa 29:8) all gathered together under the rule of one will, to make a common attack upon the church of God.

The connection between this fourth turn and the third is precisely the same as between Isa 8:9, Isa 8:10, and Isa 8:6-8. The exclamation of woe ( hoi ) is an expression of pain, as in Isa 10:1; and this is followed by a proclamation of the judgment of wrath. The description of the rolling wave of nations is as pictorial as the well-known illi inter sese , etc.

, of the Cyclops in Virgil. “It spreads and stretches out, as if it would never cease to roll, and roar, and surge, and sweep onward in its course” (Drechsler). In the expression “it” ( bo ) in Isa 17:13, the many surging nations are kneaded together, as it were, into one mass. It costs God simply a threatening word; and this mass all flies apart ( mimmerchâk like mērâchōk , Isa 23:7), and falls into dust, and whirls about in all directions, like the chaff of threshing-floors in high situations, or like dust whirled up by the storm.

The judgment commences in the evening, and rages through the night; and before the morning dawns, the army of nations raised by the imperial power is all destroyed (compare Isa 29:7, Isa 29:8, and the fulfilment in Isa 37:36). The fact that the oracle concerning Damascus in its fourth stage takes so comprehensive and, so far as Israel is concerned, so promising a form, may be explained on the ground that Syria was the forerunner of Asshur in the attack upon Israel, and that the alliance between Israel and Syria became the occasion of the complications with Asshur.

If the substance of the massâ Dammesek (the oracle concerning Damascus) had been restricted to the prophecy contained in the name Mahershalal, the element of promise so characteristic of the prophecies against the nations of the world would be entirely wanting. But the shout of triumph, “This is the portion,” etc. , supplied a terminal point, beyond which the massa could not go without the sacrifice of its unity.

We are therefore warranted in regarding Isa 18:1-7 as an independent prophecy, notwithstanding its commencement, which apparently forms a continuation of the fourth strophe of Isa 17:1-14. Ethiopia’s Submission to Jehovah - Isa 18:1-7 The notion that Isa 18:4-6 contains an account of the judgment of Jehovah upon Ethiopia is quite an untenable one. The prophet is here predicting the destruction of the army of Sennacherib in his usual way, and in accordance with the actual fulfilment (Isa 37:36).

The view which Hofmann has adopted from the Jewish expositors - namely, that the people so strangely described at the commencement and close of the prophecy is the Israelitish nation - is equally untenable. It is Ethiopia. Taking both these facts together, then, the conclusion to which we are brought is, that the prophet is here foretelling the effect that will be produced upon Ethiopia by the judgment which Jehovah is about to inflict upon Asshur.

But it is altogether improbable either that the prophecy falls later than the Assyrian expedition against Egypt (as Schegg supposes), or that the Ethiopian ambassadors mentioned here are despatched to Judah to seek for friendship and aid (as Ewald, Knobel, Meier, and Thenius maintain). The expedition was still impending, and that against Judah was the means to this further end.

The ambassadors are not sent to Judah, but carry commands with the most stirring despatch to every province under Ethiopian rule. The Ethiopian kingdom is thrown into the greatest excitement in the face of the approaching Assyrian invasion, and the messengers are sent out to raise the militia. At that time both Egypts were governed by the Ethiopian (or twenty-fifth) dynasty, Sabako the Ethiopian having made himself master of the country on the Lower Nile.

The king of Egypt who was contemporaneous with Sennacherib was the Tirhaka of the Old Testament, the Tarakos of Manetho, and the Tearkon of Strabo - a great conqueror, according to Megasthenes, like Sesostris and Nebuchadnezzar, who had carried his conquests as far as the Pillars of Hercules (Strabo, xv 1, 6). This explains the strangely sounding description given in Isa 18:2, Isa 18:7 of the Ethiopian people, which had the universal reputation in antiquity of gigantic strength and invincibility.

It is impossible to determine the length of time that intervened between the composition of the prophecy and the fourteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign, in which the Assyrian army commenced the expedition across Judah to Egypt. The event which the prophecy foretells - namely, that the judgment of Jehovah upon Asshur would be followed by the submission of Ethiopia to Jehovah - was only partially and provisionally fulfilled (2Ch 32:23).

And there is nothing to surprise us in this, inasmuch as in the prophecies delivered before the destruction of Assyria the latter always presented itself to the mind of the prophet as the kingdom of the world; and consequently the prophecy had also an eschatological feature, which still remained for a future and remote fulfilment.

Isa 17:12-14 Fourth turn: “Woe to the raoring of many nations: like the roaring of seas they roar; and to the rumbling of nations, like the rumbling of mighty waters they rumble! Nations, like the rumbling of many waters they rumble; and He threatens it: then it flies far away, and is chased like chaff of the mountains before the wind, and like a cloud of dust before the gale.

At eventide, behold consternation; and before the morning dawn it is destroyed: this the portion of our plunderers, and the lot of our robbers. ” It is the destruction of Asshur that the prophet is predicting here (as in Isa 14:24-27; Isa 29:5-8, etc.) , though not of Asshur as Asshur, but of Asshur as the imperial kingdom, which embraced a multitude of nations (Isa 22:6; Isa 8:9, Isa 8:10; Isa 14:26; Isa 29:7, Isa 29:8) all gathered together under the rule of one will, to make a common attack upon the church of God.

The connection between this fourth turn and the third is precisely the same as between Isa 8:9, Isa 8:10, and Isa 8:6-8. The exclamation of woe ( hoi ) is an expression of pain, as in Isa 10:1; and this is followed by a proclamation of the judgment of wrath. The description of the rolling wave of nations is as pictorial as the well-known illi inter sese , etc.

, of the Cyclops in Virgil. “It spreads and stretches out, as if it would never cease to roll, and roar, and surge, and sweep onward in its course” (Drechsler). In the expression “it” ( bo ) in Isa 17:13, the many surging nations are kneaded together, as it were, into one mass. It costs God simply a threatening word; and this mass all flies apart ( mimmerchâk like mērâchōk , Isa 23:7), and falls into dust, and whirls about in all directions, like the chaff of threshing-floors in high situations, or like dust whirled up by the storm.

The judgment commences in the evening, and rages through the night; and before the morning dawns, the army of nations raised by the imperial power is all destroyed (compare Isa 29:7, Isa 29:8, and the fulfilment in Isa 37:36). The fact that the oracle concerning Damascus in its fourth stage takes so comprehensive and, so far as Israel is concerned, so promising a form, may be explained on the ground that Syria was the forerunner of Asshur in the attack upon Israel, and that the alliance between Israel and Syria became the occasion of the complications with Asshur.

If the substance of the massâ Dammesek (the oracle concerning Damascus) had been restricted to the prophecy contained in the name Mahershalal, the element of promise so characteristic of the prophecies against the nations of the world would be entirely wanting. But the shout of triumph, “This is the portion,” etc. , supplied a terminal point, beyond which the massa could not go without the sacrifice of its unity.

We are therefore warranted in regarding Isa 18:1-7 as an independent prophecy, notwithstanding its commencement, which apparently forms a continuation of the fourth strophe of Isa 17:1-14. Ethiopia’s Submission to Jehovah - Isa 18:1-7 The notion that Isa 18:4-6 contains an account of the judgment of Jehovah upon Ethiopia is quite an untenable one. The prophet is here predicting the destruction of the army of Sennacherib in his usual way, and in accordance with the actual fulfilment (Isa 37:36).

The view which Hofmann has adopted from the Jewish expositors - namely, that the people so strangely described at the commencement and close of the prophecy is the Israelitish nation - is equally untenable. It is Ethiopia. Taking both these facts together, then, the conclusion to which we are brought is, that the prophet is here foretelling the effect that will be produced upon Ethiopia by the judgment which Jehovah is about to inflict upon Asshur.

But it is altogether improbable either that the prophecy falls later than the Assyrian expedition against Egypt (as Schegg supposes), or that the Ethiopian ambassadors mentioned here are despatched to Judah to seek for friendship and aid (as Ewald, Knobel, Meier, and Thenius maintain). The expedition was still impending, and that against Judah was the means to this further end.

The ambassadors are not sent to Judah, but carry commands with the most stirring despatch to every province under Ethiopian rule. The Ethiopian kingdom is thrown into the greatest excitement in the face of the approaching Assyrian invasion, and the messengers are sent out to raise the militia. At that time both Egypts were governed by the Ethiopian (or twenty-fifth) dynasty, Sabako the Ethiopian having made himself master of the country on the Lower Nile.

The king of Egypt who was contemporaneous with Sennacherib was the Tirhaka of the Old Testament, the Tarakos of Manetho, and the Tearkon of Strabo - a great conqueror, according to Megasthenes, like Sesostris and Nebuchadnezzar, who had carried his conquests as far as the Pillars of Hercules (Strabo, xv 1, 6). This explains the strangely sounding description given in Isa 18:2, Isa 18:7 of the Ethiopian people, which had the universal reputation in antiquity of gigantic strength and invincibility.

It is impossible to determine the length of time that intervened between the composition of the prophecy and the fourteenth year of Hezekiah’s reign, in which the Assyrian army commenced the expedition across Judah to Egypt. The event which the prophecy foretells - namely, that the judgment of Jehovah upon Asshur would be followed by the submission of Ethiopia to Jehovah - was only partially and provisionally fulfilled (2Ch 32:23).

And there is nothing to surprise us in this, inasmuch as in the prophecies delivered before the destruction of Assyria the latter always presented itself to the mind of the prophet as the kingdom of the world; and consequently the prophecy had also an eschatological feature, which still remained for a future and remote fulfilment.

Isa 18:1-3 The prophecy commences with hoi , which never signifies heus , but always vae (woe). Here, however, it differs from Isa 17:12, and is an expression of compassion (cf. , Isa 55:1; Zec 2:10) rather than of anger; for the fact that the mighty Ethiopia is oppressed by the still mightier Asshur, is a humiliation which Jehovah has prepared for the former.

Isa 18:1, Isa 18:2 : “Woe to the land of the whirring of wings, which is beyond the rivers of Cush, that sends ambassadors into the sea and in boats of papyrus over the face of the waters. ” The land of Cush commences, according to Eze 29:10 (cf. , Isa 30:6), where Upper Egypt ends. The Sevēneh ( Aswân ), mentioned by Ezekiel, is the boundary-point at which the Nile enters Mizraim proper, and which is still a depot for goods coming from the south down the Nile.

The naharē - Cush (rivers of Cush) are chiefly those that surround the Cushite Seba (Gen 10:7). This is the name given to the present Sennâr, the Meroitic island which is enclosed between the White and Blue Nile (the Astapos of Ptolemy, or the present Bahr el - Abyad , and the Astaboras of Ptolemy, or the present Bahr el - Azrak ). According to the latest researches, more especially those of Speke, the White Nile, which takes its rise in the Lake of Nyanza, is the chief source of the Nile.

The latter, and the Blue Nile, whose confluence ( makran ) with it takes place in lat. 15° 25´, are fed by many larger or smaller tributary streams (as well as mountain torrents); the Blue Nile even more than the Nile proper. And this abundance of water in the land to the south of Sevēnēh , and still farther south beyond Seba (or Meroë ), might very well have been known to the prophet as a general fact.

The land “beyond the rivers of Cush” is the land bounded by the sources of the Nile, i. e. , (including Ethiopia itself in the stricter sense of the word) the south land under Ethiopian rule that lay still deeper in the heart of the country, the land of its African auxiliary tribes, whose names (which probably include the later Nubians and Abyssinians), as given in 2Ch 12:3; Nah 3:9; Eze 30:5; Jer 46:9, suppose a minuteness of information which has not yet been attained by modern research.

To this Ethiopia, which is designated by its farthest limits (compare Zep 3:10, where Wolff, in his book of Judith, erroneously supposes Media to be intended as the Asiatic Cush), the prophets give the strange name of eretz tziltzal cenâp . This has been interpreted as meaning “the land of the wings of an army with clashing arms” by Gesenius and others; but cenâphaim does not occur in this sense, like 'agappim in Ezekiel.

Others render it “the land of the noise of waves” (Umbreit); but cenâphaim cannot be used of waters except in such a connection as Isa 8:8. Moreover, tziltzal is not a fitting onomatopoetic word either for the clashing of arms or the noise of waves. Others, again, render it “the land of the double shadow” (Grotius, Vitringa, Knobel, and others); but, however appropriate this epithet might be to Ethiopia as a tropical land, it is very hazardous to take the word in a sense which is not sustained by the usage of the language; and the same objection may be brought against Luzzatto’s “land of the far-shadowing defence.

” Shelling has also suggested another objection - namely, that the shadow thrown even in tropical lands is not a double one, falling northwards and southwards at the same time, and therefore that it cannot be figuratively described as double-winged. Tziltzal cenâphaim is the buzzing of the wings of insects, with which Egypt and Ethiopia swarmed on account of the climate and the abundance of water: צלצל, constr .

צלצל, tinnitus , stridor , a primary meaning from which the other three meanings of the word-cymbal, harpoon (a whirring dart), and grasshopper - are derived. In Isa 7:18 the forces of Egypt are called “the fly from the end of the rivers of Egypt. ” Here Egypt and Ethiopia are called the land of the whirring of wings, inasmuch as the prophet had in his mind, under the designation of swarms of insects, the motley swarms of different people included in this great kingdom that were so fabulously strange to an Asiatic.

Within this great kingdom messengers were now passing to and fro upon its great waters in boats of papyrus (on gōme , Copt. ‛gōme , Talm. gâmi , see at Job 8:11), Greek βαρίδες παπύριναι (βαρίς, from the Egyptian bari , bali , a barque). In such vessels as these, and with Egyptian tackle, they went as far as the remote island of Taprobane. The boats were made to clap together ( pilcatiles ), so as to be carried past the cataracts (Parthey on Plutarch.

de Iside , pp. 198-9). And it is to these messengers in their paper boats that the appeal of the prophet is addressed. He sends them home; and what they are to say to their own people is generalized into an announcement to the whole earth. “Go, swift messengers, to the people stretched out and polished, to the terrible people far away on the other side, to the nation of command upon command and treading down, whose land rivers cut through.

All ye possessors of the globe and inhabitants of the earth, when a banner rises on the mountains, look ye; and when they blow the trumpets, hearken! ” We learn from what follows to what it is that the attention of Ethiopia and all the nations of the earth is directed: it is the destruction of Asshur by Jehovah. They are to attend, when they observe the two signals, the banner and the trumpet-blast; these are decisive moments.

Because Jehovah was about to deliver the world from the conquering might of Assyria, against which the Ethiopian kingdom was now summoning all the means of self-defence, the prophet sends the messengers home. Their own people, to which he sends them home, are elaborately described. They are memusshâk , stretched out, i. e. , very tall (lxx ἔθνος μετέωρον), just as the Sabaeans are said to have been in Isa 45:14.

They are also mōrât = memorât (Ges. §52, Anm. 6), smoothed, politus , i. e. , either not disfigured by an ugly growth of hair, or else, without any reference to depilation, but rather with reference to the bronze colour of their skin, smooth and shining with healthy freshness. The description which Herodotus gives of the Ethiopians, μέγιστοι καὶ κάλλιστοι ἀνθρώπων πάντων (iii.

20), quite answers to these first two predicates. They are still further described, with reference to the wide extent of their kingdom, which reached to the remotest south, as “the terrible nation והלאה מן־הוּא,” i. e. , from this point, where the prophet meets with the messengers, farther and farther off (compare 1Sa 20:21-22, but not 1Sa 18:9, where the expression has a chronological meaning, which would be less suitable here, where everything is so pictorial, and which is also to be rejected, because מן־הוּא cannot be equivalent to הוּא מאשׁר; cf.

, Nah 2:9). We may see from Isa 28:10, Isa 28:13, what kâv ( kăv , with connecting accusatives and before makkeph ), a measuring or levelling line, signifies, when used by the prophet with the reduplication which he employs here: it is a people of “command upon command,” - that is to say, a commanding nation; (according to Ewald, Knobel, and others, kâv is equivalent to the Arabic kūwe , strength, a nation of double or gigantic strength.)

“ A people of treading down ” (sc. , of others; mebūsah is a second genitive to goi ), i. e. , one which subdues and tramples down wherever it appears. These are all distinctive predicates - a nation of imposing grandeur, a ruling and conquering nation. The last predicate extols its fertile land. בּזא we take not in the sense of diripere, or as equivalent to bâzaz , like מאס, to melt, equivalent to mâsas , but in the sense of findere , i.

e. , as equivalent to בזע, like גּמא, to sip = גּמע. For it is no praise to say that a land is scoured out, or washed away, by rivers. Böttcher, who is wrong in describing this chapter as “perhaps the most difficult in the whole of the Old Testament,” very aptly compares with it the expression used by Herodotus (ii. 108), κατετμήθη ἡ Αἴγυπτος. But why this strange elaboration instead of the simple name?

There is a divine irony in the fact that a nation so great and glorious, and (though not without reason, considering its natural gifts) so full of self-consciousness, should be thrown into such violent agitation in the prospect of the danger that threatened it, and should be making such strenuous exertions to avert that danger, when Jehovah the God of Israel was about to destroy the threatening power itself in a night, and consequently all the care and trouble of Ethiopia were utterly needless.

Isa 18:1-3 The prophecy commences with hoi , which never signifies heus , but always vae (woe). Here, however, it differs from Isa 17:12, and is an expression of compassion (cf. , Isa 55:1; Zec 2:10) rather than of anger; for the fact that the mighty Ethiopia is oppressed by the still mightier Asshur, is a humiliation which Jehovah has prepared for the former.

Isa 18:1, Isa 18:2 : “Woe to the land of the whirring of wings, which is beyond the rivers of Cush, that sends ambassadors into the sea and in boats of papyrus over the face of the waters. ” The land of Cush commences, according to Eze 29:10 (cf. , Isa 30:6), where Upper Egypt ends. The Sevēneh ( Aswân ), mentioned by Ezekiel, is the boundary-point at which the Nile enters Mizraim proper, and which is still a depot for goods coming from the south down the Nile.

The naharē - Cush (rivers of Cush) are chiefly those that surround the Cushite Seba (Gen 10:7). This is the name given to the present Sennâr, the Meroitic island which is enclosed between the White and Blue Nile (the Astapos of Ptolemy, or the present Bahr el - Abyad , and the Astaboras of Ptolemy, or the present Bahr el - Azrak ). According to the latest researches, more especially those of Speke, the White Nile, which takes its rise in the Lake of Nyanza, is the chief source of the Nile.

The latter, and the Blue Nile, whose confluence ( makran ) with it takes place in lat. 15° 25´, are fed by many larger or smaller tributary streams (as well as mountain torrents); the Blue Nile even more than the Nile proper. And this abundance of water in the land to the south of Sevēnēh , and still farther south beyond Seba (or Meroë ), might very well have been known to the prophet as a general fact.

The land “beyond the rivers of Cush” is the land bounded by the sources of the Nile, i. e. , (including Ethiopia itself in the stricter sense of the word) the south land under Ethiopian rule that lay still deeper in the heart of the country, the land of its African auxiliary tribes, whose names (which probably include the later Nubians and Abyssinians), as given in 2Ch 12:3; Nah 3:9; Eze 30:5; Jer 46:9, suppose a minuteness of information which has not yet been attained by modern research.

To this Ethiopia, which is designated by its farthest limits (compare Zep 3:10, where Wolff, in his book of Judith, erroneously supposes Media to be intended as the Asiatic Cush), the prophets give the strange name of eretz tziltzal cenâp . This has been interpreted as meaning “the land of the wings of an army with clashing arms” by Gesenius and others; but cenâphaim does not occur in this sense, like 'agappim in Ezekiel.

Others render it “the land of the noise of waves” (Umbreit); but cenâphaim cannot be used of waters except in such a connection as Isa 8:8. Moreover, tziltzal is not a fitting onomatopoetic word either for the clashing of arms or the noise of waves. Others, again, render it “the land of the double shadow” (Grotius, Vitringa, Knobel, and others); but, however appropriate this epithet might be to Ethiopia as a tropical land, it is very hazardous to take the word in a sense which is not sustained by the usage of the language; and the same objection may be brought against Luzzatto’s “land of the far-shadowing defence.

” Shelling has also suggested another objection - namely, that the shadow thrown even in tropical lands is not a double one, falling northwards and southwards at the same time, and therefore that it cannot be figuratively described as double-winged. Tziltzal cenâphaim is the buzzing of the wings of insects, with which Egypt and Ethiopia swarmed on account of the climate and the abundance of water: צלצל, constr .

צלצל, tinnitus , stridor , a primary meaning from which the other three meanings of the word-cymbal, harpoon (a whirring dart), and grasshopper - are derived. In Isa 7:18 the forces of Egypt are called “the fly from the end of the rivers of Egypt. ” Here Egypt and Ethiopia are called the land of the whirring of wings, inasmuch as the prophet had in his mind, under the designation of swarms of insects, the motley swarms of different people included in this great kingdom that were so fabulously strange to an Asiatic.

Within this great kingdom messengers were now passing to and fro upon its great waters in boats of papyrus (on gōme , Copt. ‛gōme , Talm. gâmi , see at Job 8:11), Greek βαρίδες παπύριναι (βαρίς, from the Egyptian bari , bali , a barque). In such vessels as these, and with Egyptian tackle, they went as far as the remote island of Taprobane. The boats were made to clap together ( pilcatiles ), so as to be carried past the cataracts (Parthey on Plutarch.

de Iside , pp. 198-9). And it is to these messengers in their paper boats that the appeal of the prophet is addressed. He sends them home; and what they are to say to their own people is generalized into an announcement to the whole earth. “Go, swift messengers, to the people stretched out and polished, to the terrible people far away on the other side, to the nation of command upon command and treading down, whose land rivers cut through.

All ye possessors of the globe and inhabitants of the earth, when a banner rises on the mountains, look ye; and when they blow the trumpets, hearken! ” We learn from what follows to what it is that the attention of Ethiopia and all the nations of the earth is directed: it is the destruction of Asshur by Jehovah. They are to attend, when they observe the two signals, the banner and the trumpet-blast; these are decisive moments.

Because Jehovah was about to deliver the world from the conquering might of Assyria, against which the Ethiopian kingdom was now summoning all the means of self-defence, the prophet sends the messengers home. Their own people, to which he sends them home, are elaborately described. They are memusshâk , stretched out, i. e. , very tall (lxx ἔθνος μετέωρον), just as the Sabaeans are said to have been in Isa 45:14.

They are also mōrât = memorât (Ges. §52, Anm. 6), smoothed, politus , i. e. , either not disfigured by an ugly growth of hair, or else, without any reference to depilation, but rather with reference to the bronze colour of their skin, smooth and shining with healthy freshness. The description which Herodotus gives of the Ethiopians, μέγιστοι καὶ κάλλιστοι ἀνθρώπων πάντων (iii.

20), quite answers to these first two predicates. They are still further described, with reference to the wide extent of their kingdom, which reached to the remotest south, as “the terrible nation והלאה מן־הוּא,” i. e. , from this point, where the prophet meets with the messengers, farther and farther off (compare 1Sa 20:21-22, but not 1Sa 18:9, where the expression has a chronological meaning, which would be less suitable here, where everything is so pictorial, and which is also to be rejected, because מן־הוּא cannot be equivalent to הוּא מאשׁר; cf.

, Nah 2:9). We may see from Isa 28:10, Isa 28:13, what kâv ( kăv , with connecting accusatives and before makkeph ), a measuring or levelling line, signifies, when used by the prophet with the reduplication which he employs here: it is a people of “command upon command,” - that is to say, a commanding nation; (according to Ewald, Knobel, and others, kâv is equivalent to the Arabic kūwe , strength, a nation of double or gigantic strength.)

“ A people of treading down ” (sc. , of others; mebūsah is a second genitive to goi ), i. e. , one which subdues and tramples down wherever it appears. These are all distinctive predicates - a nation of imposing grandeur, a ruling and conquering nation. The last predicate extols its fertile land. בּזא we take not in the sense of diripere, or as equivalent to bâzaz , like מאס, to melt, equivalent to mâsas , but in the sense of findere , i.

e. , as equivalent to בזע, like גּמא, to sip = גּמע. For it is no praise to say that a land is scoured out, or washed away, by rivers. Böttcher, who is wrong in describing this chapter as “perhaps the most difficult in the whole of the Old Testament,” very aptly compares with it the expression used by Herodotus (ii. 108), κατετμήθη ἡ Αἴγυπτος. But why this strange elaboration instead of the simple name?

There is a divine irony in the fact that a nation so great and glorious, and (though not without reason, considering its natural gifts) so full of self-consciousness, should be thrown into such violent agitation in the prospect of the danger that threatened it, and should be making such strenuous exertions to avert that danger, when Jehovah the God of Israel was about to destroy the threatening power itself in a night, and consequently all the care and trouble of Ethiopia were utterly needless.

Isa 18:1-3 The prophecy commences with hoi , which never signifies heus , but always vae (woe). Here, however, it differs from Isa 17:12, and is an expression of compassion (cf. , Isa 55:1; Zec 2:10) rather than of anger; for the fact that the mighty Ethiopia is oppressed by the still mightier Asshur, is a humiliation which Jehovah has prepared for the former.

Isa 18:1, Isa 18:2 : “Woe to the land of the whirring of wings, which is beyond the rivers of Cush, that sends ambassadors into the sea and in boats of papyrus over the face of the waters. ” The land of Cush commences, according to Eze 29:10 (cf. , Isa 30:6), where Upper Egypt ends. The Sevēneh ( Aswân ), mentioned by Ezekiel, is the boundary-point at which the Nile enters Mizraim proper, and which is still a depot for goods coming from the south down the Nile.

The naharē - Cush (rivers of Cush) are chiefly those that surround the Cushite Seba (Gen 10:7). This is the name given to the present Sennâr, the Meroitic island which is enclosed between the White and Blue Nile (the Astapos of Ptolemy, or the present Bahr el - Abyad , and the Astaboras of Ptolemy, or the present Bahr el - Azrak ). According to the latest researches, more especially those of Speke, the White Nile, which takes its rise in the Lake of Nyanza, is the chief source of the Nile.

The latter, and the Blue Nile, whose confluence ( makran ) with it takes place in lat. 15° 25´, are fed by many larger or smaller tributary streams (as well as mountain torrents); the Blue Nile even more than the Nile proper. And this abundance of water in the land to the south of Sevēnēh , and still farther south beyond Seba (or Meroë ), might very well have been known to the prophet as a general fact.

The land “beyond the rivers of Cush” is the land bounded by the sources of the Nile, i. e. , (including Ethiopia itself in the stricter sense of the word) the south land under Ethiopian rule that lay still deeper in the heart of the country, the land of its African auxiliary tribes, whose names (which probably include the later Nubians and Abyssinians), as given in 2Ch 12:3; Nah 3:9; Eze 30:5; Jer 46:9, suppose a minuteness of information which has not yet been attained by modern research.

To this Ethiopia, which is designated by its farthest limits (compare Zep 3:10, where Wolff, in his book of Judith, erroneously supposes Media to be intended as the Asiatic Cush), the prophets give the strange name of eretz tziltzal cenâp . This has been interpreted as meaning “the land of the wings of an army with clashing arms” by Gesenius and others; but cenâphaim does not occur in this sense, like 'agappim in Ezekiel.

Others render it “the land of the noise of waves” (Umbreit); but cenâphaim cannot be used of waters except in such a connection as Isa 8:8. Moreover, tziltzal is not a fitting onomatopoetic word either for the clashing of arms or the noise of waves. Others, again, render it “the land of the double shadow” (Grotius, Vitringa, Knobel, and others); but, however appropriate this epithet might be to Ethiopia as a tropical land, it is very hazardous to take the word in a sense which is not sustained by the usage of the language; and the same objection may be brought against Luzzatto’s “land of the far-shadowing defence.

” Shelling has also suggested another objection - namely, that the shadow thrown even in tropical lands is not a double one, falling northwards and southwards at the same time, and therefore that it cannot be figuratively described as double-winged. Tziltzal cenâphaim is the buzzing of the wings of insects, with which Egypt and Ethiopia swarmed on account of the climate and the abundance of water: צלצל, constr .

צלצל, tinnitus , stridor , a primary meaning from which the other three meanings of the word-cymbal, harpoon (a whirring dart), and grasshopper - are derived. In Isa 7:18 the forces of Egypt are called “the fly from the end of the rivers of Egypt. ” Here Egypt and Ethiopia are called the land of the whirring of wings, inasmuch as the prophet had in his mind, under the designation of swarms of insects, the motley swarms of different people included in this great kingdom that were so fabulously strange to an Asiatic.

Within this great kingdom messengers were now passing to and fro upon its great waters in boats of papyrus (on gōme , Copt. ‛gōme , Talm. gâmi , see at Job 8:11), Greek βαρίδες παπύριναι (βαρίς, from the Egyptian bari , bali , a barque). In such vessels as these, and with Egyptian tackle, they went as far as the remote island of Taprobane. The boats were made to clap together ( pilcatiles ), so as to be carried past the cataracts (Parthey on Plutarch.

de Iside , pp. 198-9). And it is to these messengers in their paper boats that the appeal of the prophet is addressed. He sends them home; and what they are to say to their own people is generalized into an announcement to the whole earth. “Go, swift messengers, to the people stretched out and polished, to the terrible people far away on the other side, to the nation of command upon command and treading down, whose land rivers cut through.

All ye possessors of the globe and inhabitants of the earth, when a banner rises on the mountains, look ye; and when they blow the trumpets, hearken! ” We learn from what follows to what it is that the attention of Ethiopia and all the nations of the earth is directed: it is the destruction of Asshur by Jehovah. They are to attend, when they observe the two signals, the banner and the trumpet-blast; these are decisive moments.

Because Jehovah was about to deliver the world from the conquering might of Assyria, against which the Ethiopian kingdom was now summoning all the means of self-defence, the prophet sends the messengers home. Their own people, to which he sends them home, are elaborately described. They are memusshâk , stretched out, i. e. , very tall (lxx ἔθνος μετέωρον), just as the Sabaeans are said to have been in Isa 45:14.

They are also mōrât = memorât (Ges. §52, Anm. 6), smoothed, politus , i. e. , either not disfigured by an ugly growth of hair, or else, without any reference to depilation, but rather with reference to the bronze colour of their skin, smooth and shining with healthy freshness. The description which Herodotus gives of the Ethiopians, μέγιστοι καὶ κάλλιστοι ἀνθρώπων πάντων (iii.

20), quite answers to these first two predicates. They are still further described, with reference to the wide extent of their kingdom, which reached to the remotest south, as “the terrible nation והלאה מן־הוּא,” i. e. , from this point, where the prophet meets with the messengers, farther and farther off (compare 1Sa 20:21-22, but not 1Sa 18:9, where the expression has a chronological meaning, which would be less suitable here, where everything is so pictorial, and which is also to be rejected, because מן־הוּא cannot be equivalent to הוּא מאשׁר; cf.

, Nah 2:9). We may see from Isa 28:10, Isa 28:13, what kâv ( kăv , with connecting accusatives and before makkeph ), a measuring or levelling line, signifies, when used by the prophet with the reduplication which he employs here: it is a people of “command upon command,” - that is to say, a commanding nation; (according to Ewald, Knobel, and others, kâv is equivalent to the Arabic kūwe , strength, a nation of double or gigantic strength.)

“ A people of treading down ” (sc. , of others; mebūsah is a second genitive to goi ), i. e. , one which subdues and tramples down wherever it appears. These are all distinctive predicates - a nation of imposing grandeur, a ruling and conquering nation. The last predicate extols its fertile land. בּזא we take not in the sense of diripere, or as equivalent to bâzaz , like מאס, to melt, equivalent to mâsas , but in the sense of findere , i.

e. , as equivalent to בזע, like גּמא, to sip = גּמע. For it is no praise to say that a land is scoured out, or washed away, by rivers. Böttcher, who is wrong in describing this chapter as “perhaps the most difficult in the whole of the Old Testament,” very aptly compares with it the expression used by Herodotus (ii. 108), κατετμήθη ἡ Αἴγυπτος. But why this strange elaboration instead of the simple name?

There is a divine irony in the fact that a nation so great and glorious, and (though not without reason, considering its natural gifts) so full of self-consciousness, should be thrown into such violent agitation in the prospect of the danger that threatened it, and should be making such strenuous exertions to avert that danger, when Jehovah the God of Israel was about to destroy the threatening power itself in a night, and consequently all the care and trouble of Ethiopia were utterly needless.

Isa 18:4-6 The prophet knows for certain that the messengers may be home and announce this act of Jehovah to their own people and to all the world. “For thus hath Jehovah spoken to me: I will be still, and will observe upon my throne during clear weather in sunshine, during a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest. For before the harvest, when the blossom falls off, and the fruit becomes the ripening grape: then will He cut off the branches with pruning-hooks; and the tendrils He removes, breaks off.

They are left altogether to the birds of prey on the mountains, and to the cattle of the land; and the birds of prey summer thereon, and all the cattle of the land will winter thereon. ” The prophecy explains itself here, as is very frequently the case, especially with Isaiah; for the literal words of v. 6 show us unquestionably what it is that Jehovah will allow to develop itself so prosperously under favourable circumstances, and without any interposition on His part, until He suddenly and violently puts an end to the whole, must as it is approaching perfect maturity.

It is the might of Assyria. Jehovah quietly looks on from the heavenly seat of His glorious presence, without disturbing the course of the thing intended. This quietness, however, is not negligence, but, as the hortative expressions show, a well-considered resolution. The two Caphs in v. 4 are not comparative, but indicate the time. He remains quiet whilst there is clear weather with sunshine (עלי indicating continuance, as in Jer 8:18; 1Sa 14:32), and whilst there is a dew-cloud in the midst of that warmth, which is so favourable for the harvest, by causing the plants that have been thoroughly heated in the day and refreshed at night by the dew, to shoot up and ripen with rapidity and luxuriance.

The plant thought of, as v. 5 clearly shows, is the vine. By liphnē kâtzir (before the harvest) we are either to understand the period just before the wheat-harvest, which coincides with the flowering of the grape; or, since Isaiah uses kâtzir for bâzri in Isa 16:9, the time at the close of the summer, immediately preceding the vintage. Here again the Caph indicates the time.

When the blossoming is over, so that the flower fades away, and the fruit that has set becomes a ripening grape ( boser , as in Job 15:33, not in the sense of labruscum , but of omphax ; and gâmal , maturescere , as in Num 17:8, maturare ), He cuts off the branches ( zalzalilm , from zilzēl , to swing to and fro; compare the Arabic dâliye , a vine-branch, from dalâ , to hang long and loose) upon which the nearly ripened grapes are hanging, and removes or nips off the tendrils ( netishoth , as in Jer 5:10, from nâtash , to stretch far out; niphal , to twist about a long way, Isa 16:8, compare Jer 48:32); an intentional asyndeton with a pictorial sound. The words of Jehovah concerning Himself have here passed imperceptibly into words of the prophet concerning Jehovah.

The ripening grapes, as Isa 18:6 now explains, are the Assyrians, who were not far from the summit of their power; the fruit-branches that are cut off and nipped in pieces are their corpses, which are now through both summer and winter the food of swarms of summer birds, as well as of beasts of prey that remain the whole winter through. This is the act of divine judgment, to which the approaching exaltation of the banner, and the approaching blast of trumpets, is to call the attention of the people of Ethiopia.