3 All you inhabitants of the world, and you dwellers on the earth, when an ensign is lifted up on the mountains, look; and when the trumpet is blown, listen.
He will lift up a banner to the nations from far, And he will whistle for them from the end of the earth. Behold, they will come speedily and swiftly.
Yahweh, your hand is lifted up, yet they don't see: but they shall see [your] zeal for the people, and be disappointed; yes, fire shall devour your adversaries.
> The Mighty One, God, Yahweh, speaks, And calls the earth from sunrise to sunset.
Hear, heavens, And listen, earth; for Yahweh has spoken: I have nourished and brought up children, And they have rebelled against me.
Set up an ensign on the bare mountain, lift up the voice to them, wave the hand, that they may go into the gates of the nobles.
The noise of a multitude in the mountains, as of a great people! the noise of a tumult of the kingdoms of the nations gathered together! Yahweh of Hosts is mustering the host for the battle.
Does the trumpet alarm sound in a city, Without the people being afraid? Does evil happen to a city, And Yahweh hasn't done it? Surely the Lord Yahweh will do nothing, Unless he reveals his secret to his servants the prophets. The lion has roared. Who will not fear? The Lord Yahweh has spoken. Who can but prophesy?
Hear, you mountains, Yahweh's controversy, And you enduring foundations of the earth; For Yahweh has a controversy with his people, And he will contend with Israel.
Yahweh will be seen over them; And his arrow will go flash like lightning; And the Lord Yahweh will blow the trumpet, And will go with whirlwinds of the south.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Isaiah 18
Commentary on Isaiah 18 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 18
Whatever country it is that is meant here by "the land shadowing with wings,' here is a woe denounced against it, for God has, upon his people's account, a quarrel with it.
Isa 18:1-7
Interpreters are very much at a loss where to find this land that lies beyond the rivers of Cush. Some take it to be Egypt, a maritime country, and full of rivers, and which courted Israel to depend upon them, but proved broken reeds; but against this it is strongly objected that the next chapter is distinguished from this by the title of the burden of Egypt. Others take it to be Ethiopia, and read it, which lies near, or about, the rivers of Ethiopia, not that in Africa, which lay south of Egypt, but that which we call Arabia, which lay east of Canaan, which Tirhakah was now king of. He thought to protect the Jews, as it were, under the shadow of his wings, by giving a powerful diversion to the king of Assyria, when he made a descent upon his country, at the time that he was attacking Jerusalem, 2 Ki. 19:9. But though by his ambassadors he bade defiance to the king of Assyria, and encouraged the Jews to depend upon him, God by the prophet slights him, and will not go forth with him; he may take his own course, but God will take another course to protect Jerusalem, while he suffers the attempt of Tirhakah to miscarry and his Arabian army to be ruined; for the Assyrian army shall become a present or sacrifice to the Lord of hosts, and to the place of his name, by the hand of an angel, not by the hand of Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, v. 7. This is a very probable exposition of this chapter. But from a hint of Dr. Lightfoot's, in his Harmony of the Old Testament, I incline to understand this chapter as a prophecy against Assyria, and so a continuation of the prophecy in the last three verses of the foregoing chapter, with which therefore this should be joined. That was against the army of the Assyrians which rushed in upon Judah; this is against the land of Assyria itself, which lay beyond the rivers of Arabia, that is, the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, which bordered on Arabia Deserta. And in calling it the land shadowing with wings he seems to refer to what he himself had said of it (ch. 8:8), that the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel! The prophet might perhaps describe the Assyrians by such dark expressions, not naming them, for the same reason that St. Paul, in his prophecy, speaks of the Roman empire by a periphrasis: He who now letteth, 2 Th. 2:7. Here is,