The LORD’S Message to Cush
1 Woe to the land of buzzing insect wings
beyond the rivers of Cush, h
2 which sends envoys by sea,
in reed vessels over the water.
Go, swift messengers,
to a nation tall and smooth-skinned,
to a people feared far and near,
a powerful nation with a strange language,
whose land is divided by rivers.
3 All you inhabitants of the world
and you who live on the earth,
when a banner is raised on the mountains, look!
When a trumpet sounds, listen!
4 For the LORD said to me:
I will quietly look out from my place,
like shimmering heat in sunshine,
like a rain cloud in harvest heat.
5 For before the harvest, when the blossoming is over
and the blossom becomes a ripening grape,
he will cut off the shoots with a pruning knife,
and tear away and remove the branches.
6 They will all be left for the birds of prey on the hills
and for the wild animals of the land.
The birds of prey will spend the summer feeding on them,
and all the wild animals the winter.
7 At that time a gift will be brought to the LORD of Armies from a people tall and smooth-skinned, i a people feared far and near, a powerful nation with a strange language, whose land is divided by rivers—to Mount Zion, the place of the name of the LORD of Armies.
18:1–2a. The literary imagery is very artistic, creating a mental picture of this distant nation. The land of Ethiopia was known as a place from whence the locusts came; Isaiah thus describes it as “the land of buzzing insect wings” (18:1). The reference also depicts the Ethiopians as being able to cover and dominate an area very rapidly. The Ethiopians are described as people who send their ambassadors across the water by means of reed vessels (18:2a). “The water” probably is a reference to the Nile River, but it is unlikely that the reed vessels were used on as grand a scale as is suggested in verse 2. If we keep in mind Isaiah’s artistic purposes, however, we have before us a picture of a people who hasten to send their emissaries in light vessels to wherever their mission takes them.
18:2b–6. There is a certain ironic twist because the Lord has his own mission to the Ethiopians. He calls on his “swift messengers” to declare his word to the Ethiopians, who are further described as tall and “smooth-skinned” (18:2b)—an awe-inspiring people who have been able to expand their territory by trampling down their adversaries. Isaiah keeps us in suspense as to the nature of God’s message by turning his attention to the inhabitants of the world (18:3). They must wait for the “banner” to be raised and the trumpet to be blown. God also waits, withholding judgment, as he looks at the plotting of the nations. He hovers over them from his dwelling place like the shimmering heat or an isolated cloud (18:4).
18:7. The people so carefully described in verse 2 are described in the same way in verse 7. They are still tall and awe-inspiring, but this time they are coming not as messengers of war but as worshipers of God. They are bringing gifts to him in Jerusalem. Instead of Judah bringing gifts to Ethiopia to placate her king and to join in her cause of rebellion against the Assyrians, the Ethiopians come to Mount Zion to placate the king of Judah. In this way Isaiah moves from the historical circumstances and context in which the prophecy has been written to an eschatological description. The eschatological hope of the psalms is that the people of Ethiopia might also experience the salvation of the Lord and that they too might be inhabitants of the new Jerusalem.