That sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters, saying, Go, ye swift messengers, to a nation scattered and peeled, to a people terrible from their beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden down, whose land the rivers have spoiled!
properly · noun, common masculine singular absolute
upon
פְּנֵיpe.nei-
H6440
the face (as the part that turns) · noun, common masculine plural construct
waters
מַיִם֒ma.Yim
H4325
water · noun, common masculine plural absolute
Go
יָלַךְyâlak
H3212
to walk (literally or figuratively)
swift
קַלִּ֗יםka.Lim
H7031
light · adjective, masculine plural absolute
messengers
מַלְאָכִ֣יםmal.'a.Khim
H4397
a messenger · noun, common masculine plural absolute
nation
גּוֹי֙goy
H1471
a foreign nation · noun, common masculine singular absolute
scattered
מְמֻשָּׁ֣ךְme.mu.Shakh
H4900
to draw · verb, pual passive participle, masculine singular absolute
peeled
מוֹרָטmôwrâṭ
H4178
obstinate
people
עַ֥ם'am
H5971
a people (as a congregated unit) · noun, common masculine singular absolute
terrible
נוֹרָ֖אno.Ra'
H3372
to fear · verb, niphal active participle, masculine singular absolute
hitherto
וָהָ֑לְאָהva.Hal.'ah
H1973
to the distance · conjunction + adverb
nation
גּ֚וֹיGoy
H1471
a foreign nation · noun, common masculine singular construct
out
קַוkav-
H6978
stalwart · noun, common masculine singular construct
down
וּמְבוּסָ֔הu.me.vu.Sah
H4001
a trampling · conjunction + noun, common feminine singular absolute
land
אַרְצֽוֹ'ar.Tzo
H776
the earth (at large · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
rivers
נְהָרִ֖יםne.ha.Rim
H5104
a stream (including the sea · noun, common masculine plural absolute
spoiled
בָּזְא֥וּba.ze.'U
H958
probably to cleave · verb, qal perfect, 3rd person common plural
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Genesis 10:8-9 And Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth.
Isaiah 18:7 In that time shall the present be brought unto the LORD of hosts of a people scattered and peeled, and from a people terrible from their beg…
2 Chronicles 12:2-4 And it came to pass, that in the fifth year of king Rehoboam Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem, because they had transgressed…
2 Chronicles 14:9 And there came out against them Zerah the Ethiopian with an host of a thousand thousand, and three hundred chariots; and came unto Mareshah.
2 Chronicles 16:8 Were not the Ethiopians and the Lubims a huge host, with very many chariots and horsemen? yet, because thou didst rely on the LORD, he deliv…
Exodus 2:3 And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child the…
Isaiah 19:5-7 And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and dried up.
Isaiah 30:2-4 That walk to go down into Egypt, and have not asked at my mouth; to strengthen themselves in the strength of Pharaoh, and to trust in the sh…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 18:1–end
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…
ambassadors--messengers sent to Jerusalem at the time that negotiations passed between Tirhakah and Hezekiah against the expected attack of Sennacherib (Isa 37:9).
by . . . sea--on the Nile (Isa 19:5): as what follows proves.
vessels of bulrushes--light canoes, formed of papyrus, daubed over with pitch: so the "ark" in which Moses was exposed (Exo 2:3).
Go--Isaiah tells them to take back the tidings of what God is about to do (Isa 18:4) against the common enemy of both Judah and Ethiopia.
scattered and peeled--rather, "strong and energetic" [MAURER]. The Hebrew for "strong" is literally, "drawn out" (Margin; Psa 36:10; Ecc 2:3). "Energetic," literally, "sharp" (Hab 1:8, Margin; the v…
That sendeth ambassadors by the sea,.... The Red Sea, which washed the coasts of Egypt and Ethiopia, and which were united into one kingdom under Sabacus, or So the Ethiopian, called king of Egypt, 2 Kings 17:4 and this kingdom, or rather the king of it, is here described as sending ambassadors by sea to foreign courts, to make leagues and alliances, and thereby strengthen himself against attempts made on him; though some understand it of one part of Ethiopia, on one side of the Red Sea, sending to that on the other side; and some of Tirhakah the Ethiopian sending messengers to the king of Assyria to bid him defiance, and let him know he intended to fight him; and at the same time sent to th…
The Church Fathers
(Verse 2) And it is said about their teaching and their language: You who send books of this age into the sea, the hostages of your perversity, and letters to deceive those who will read them. The swift messengers go to the high and foreign people, and the most wicked. For no ecclesiastics have so much zeal for good as heretics have for evil, and they believe they will gain advantage by deceiving others and destroying those who are already doomed. But this people is called exalted because of their pride: and foreign and wicked because they are estranged from God.
(Verse 2) Therefore, these people across the rivers of Ethiopia are sending messengers into the sea of this world, that is, their disciples, who are said to carry their volumes, rightly called papyrus vessels, that is, papers carried on the water, which are quickly erased. For just as books are quickly obscured and destroyed by water and moisture, so too their message and teaching, once it appears to possess some strength in the beginning, passes away and slips away. Therefore, through irony, it is said to them: O Angels of heretics, go quickly. These false apostles, deceitful workers, who transform themselves into apostles of Christ, are referred to as such by the blessed apostle Paul (2 Cor. XI). And go to the nation torn and ravaged: torn from God and torn apart by the bites of heretics. To a horrible people; for there is nothing more horrible than blasphemy, which lifts up its own mouth in arrogance. After which there is no other people; for every sin when compared to blasphemy is lighter. A people waiting, waiting, and trampled upon. For all heretics promise themselves celestial things, and they promise great things, and yet they are trampled upon by demons. Whose land the rivers have plundered, which do not have waters from the sky, but from the earth. For what corner is there, what remote wilderness of the earth, to which the polluted speech of heretics does not reach?
(Verse 2.) He who sends envoys to the sea, and in papyrus vessels on the waters. Go, swift angels, to a nation torn and ravaged, to a fearsome people after whom there is no other, to a nation waiting and trampled, whose rivers they have plundered. Among the Hebrews and Egyptians and the Egyptians themselves and the Egyptians, they are called by one name, Mesraim. This saying is have, so that no one may get stuck on the word, when they find a masculine word for a feminine gender, that is, for land a man, because even now it is said: He who sends envoys to the sea, that is, Mesraim itself, the Egyptian himself, because from Alexandria, which was then, as I said, called No, envoys were sent to Jerusalem and in papyrus vessels, that is, in letters, or ships, promising their help to them, saying: Go swiftly to the torn people of the Jews, and torn by the assault of the Assyrians; to the people once fearsome, who wielded the command of God, to whose power no one else can be compared: to a nation that always awaited the help of God, and yet is trampled by men: whose land rivers, that is, different kings, have ravaged. Others, however, think that the apostrophe is directed to the Lord, and the meaning is: O God, who sends prophets into the sea of this world, and like sailors through letters, warns the people, commanding them with your messages: go quickly to my torn and convulsed people, to the strongest people, who once terrified all nations around, who always waited for God's help, and because of the greatness of their sins, which they hope for, they do not deserve to receive it: whose land was ravaged by the kings of various nations, and so on. Eusebius of Caesarea, promising a historical interpretation in the title, wanders off into various meanings, so that when I read his books, I found something entirely different from what the index promised. Wherever he runs out of history, he moves on to allegory, and in this way he combines things that are separate, so that I marvel at his skill in joining together new elements of language into one unity of stone and iron. I mention this briefly, so that no one thinks that we have borrowed what we say from his sources; for even in the present chapter, he says that prophecy is directed against the Jews and Jerusalem, because at the beginning of the Christian faith they sent letters to all the nations, urging them not to…
Dictionary and topics
Ambassador — In the Old Testament the Hebrew word tsir, meaning “one who goes on an errand,” is rendered thus (Josh. 9:4; Prov. 13:17; Isa. 18:2; Jer. 49:14; Obad. 1:1). This is also the rendering of melits,…
Bulrush — (1.) In Isa. 58:5 the rendering of a word which denotes “belonging to a marsh,” from the nature of the soil in which it grows (Isa. 18:2). It was sometimes platted into ropes (Job. 41:2; A.V.,…
Ethiopia — Country of burnt faces; the Greek word by which the Hebrew Cush is rendered (Gen. 2:13; 2 Kings 19:9; Esther 1:1; Job 28:19; Ps. 68:31; 87:4), a country which lay to the south of Egypt, beginning at…
Ferry boat — (2 Sam. 19:18), some kind of boat for crossing the river which the men of Judah placed at the service of the king. Floats or rafts for this purpose were in use from remote times (Isa. 18:2).
Pilled — (Genesis 30:37,38) “peeled,” Isai 18:2; Ezek 29:28 The verb “to pill” appears in old English as identical in meaning with “to peel, to strip.”
Ambassadors · Other references to — Other references to
Bulrush · Boats ma — Boats ma
Ethiopia · General references — General references
Jews, The · Scattered and peeled — Scattered and peeled
Ship · .Of bulrushes — .Of bulrushes
Ships · Sometimes made of bulrushes — Sometimes made of bulrushes
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
Isaiah 18:2 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Sending ambassadors by the sea. This relates strictly to the state of those times. It would appear that this nation solicited the Egyptians or Syrians to harass the Jews, or that the Assyrians employed them for the purpose of harassing the Jews, or that they had formed an alliance with the Egyptians, in order that, by their united force, they might prevent the power of the Assyrians from increasing beyond bounds; for nothing more than conjectures can be offered, because we have no histories that give any account of it, and where historical evidence is wanting, we must resort to probable conjectures. These voyages, there is reason to believe, were not made to any place near at hand, but to a…
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; Zac 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…
Ethiopia was at the southern extremity of the kingdom of Egypt. At the time, Egypt was ruled by the dynasty of the Ethiopian Piankhi.
Rashi on Isaiah 18:2
Go swift messengers to see whether it is true that the Israelites have returned to their place, a nation which is pulled and torn, to a people that is awesome from its inception.
from their beginning and onward From the day it was chosen as a people and onward.
a nation punished in kind Heb. קַו-קָו [lit. a line for a line, i.e.,] when he is punished for his sin, he is punished in kind and given to be trampled. Alternatively, קַו-קָו is an expression of vomit (קִיא) (Lam. 3:45): “Loathsome and rejected.”
river [figurative for] kings.