1. land of the whirring wings. Nubia (Cush in the Hebrew), along the upper reaches of the Nile in equatorial Africa, was known for its abundance of insects, a phenomenon attested to by Herodotus. The vessels of reeds mentioned in the next verse are equally part of the poem’s evocation of the realia of a kingdom along the Nile.

2. Go, swift messengers. The messengers (malʾ akhim) are evidently a different group from the envoys (tsirim) of the preceding line. It is not clear where the Nubian envoys are heading, and different attempts have been made to line up this passage with a particular moment in the political history of the late eighth century B.C.E. The swift messengers appear to be sent out from the kingdom of Judah to announce to the Nubians the disaster about to overtake them.

a rangy and smooth-skinned nation. The Hebrew word translated as “rangy” is literally “pulled out” or “elongated,” not the usual word for “tall.” The term represented as “smooth-skinned” derives from a verbal stem that means either “polished” or “plucked.” This would be an exoticizing way to describe the tall Africans with little body hair, even though their blackness is unmentioned.

a gibberish nation. The Hebrew says “a qaw-qaw nation,” this being an onomatopoeia for unintelligible sounds, always a scary aspect of foreigners.

and sowing defeat. The Hebrew says merely “and defeat,” but something like “sowing” or “inflicting” seems to be implied. This is in other words, a powerful nation.

3. All the world’s inhabitants. The connection with the prophecy concerning Nubia may simply be that all the world’s inhabitants are invited to witness the judgment God will wreak on Nubia.

banner . . . ram’s horn. Both are signals for rallying armies.

4. when the heat dazzles in the light. This and all the seasonal indications that follow express the temporal imminence of God’s judgment.

5. cut away twigs. The entire agricultural metaphor points to the decimation of Nubia that is to be inflicted by God.

7. All that time. It is unusual for a statement just expressed in poetry to be repeated verbatim in prose. This could reflect an editorial addition to the text. In any case, the tribute brought to the LORD is a prophecy that the Nubians will become subject to Judah.

the place of the name of the LORD of Armies. The insertion of the superfluous “the name of” reflects a Late Biblical tendency to qualify direct assertions about YHWH by introducing “the name of” as a kind of mediation. Thus it looks suspiciously like the intervention of a later redactor.