Isaiah 18
Ethiopia’s sad future
Ethiopia sends ambassadors
1Look at that.
Boats with wings,
Sailing along Ethiopian [1] rivers.
On swift boats of papyrus stalks. [3]
Send ours in reply
To the tall and clean-shaven,
A strong nation of conquerors
Feared all over the world.
In their land cut to pieces by rivers.
3Pay attention everyone,
All of you on earth.
Watch for the signal in the hills
Listen for the sound of ram horns
God is watching and waiting
4The LORD told me this:
“I’ll be watching from here,
Silent as the warmth of sunshine,
Quiet as mist on a harvest dawn.”
After the flower blooms into a grape.
He’ll cut them down with his pruning blades.
6He’ll harvest their army
Leave them dead in the field,
A fresh crop of meat
For birds and beasts.
Eating through summer and winter.
7When that’s finished
Gifts will come to the LORD
On the hills of Jerusalem.
It’s because of those people [4]
tall and clean-shaven,
A strong nation of conquerors
Feared all over the world,
From a land cut to pieces by rivers.
Footnotes
Called Cush in Bible times, south of Egypt.
Scholars have to guess which story this poetic prophecy is talking about. Here’s one possibility. Cush took control of Egypt in about 740 BC. Like several other nations, they wanted to unite and push back the Assyrian Empire that had intruded into their lands and taxed the people. They may have sent ambassadors to King Hezekiah in Jerusalem to secure his backing. Instead, Hezekiah alerts the Assyrians who come and crush the armies of Cush and Egypt.
In ancient times and today, Egyptians have made boats by tying together stalks of papyrus reeds that grow along the banks of the Nile River. Most Egyptians lived near the river, so the river was an important means of transportation. Papyrus boats were light and quick in the water on a windy day. Norwegian ethnologist Thor Heyerdahl sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in a papyrus reed raft built according to Egyptian specs. He sailed 4,000 miles (6,400 km) from Morocco to Barbados in 57 days. He wanted to show that people from the Mediterranean could have sailed to North and South America.
The message may be that strong nations fight for dominance, but the true power comes from the LORD, King of All Creation.
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