Isaiah 18                                                              Book of Isaiah  

Isaiah 18:1 Woe to the land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia:

• Woe = Ho! The third of the seven burdens
• Land = beyond Abyssinia
  Shadowing with wings = of the rustling = zalzal (from zalal, to tinkle, compare Deuteronomy 28:42.
• Deuteronomy 28:42 All thy trees and fruit of thy land shall the locust consume.
  43 The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low.
  44 He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail.
  45 Moreover all these curses shall come upon thee, and shall pursue thee, and overtake thee, till thou be destroyed; because thou hearkenedst not unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which he commanded thee:
  46 And they shall be upon thee for a sign and for a wonder, and upon thy seed for ever.
  47 Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things;
  48 Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee.

2 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!

• The sea = the Nile. So called by the inhabitants of the Sudan today.

3 All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye.

4 For so the Lord said unto me, I will take my rest, and I will consider in my dwelling place like a clear heat upon herbs, and like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.

• Cloud of dew = summer night mist. Not a raincloud, which latter is never seen in harvest. Eight times rendered "thick clouds".

5 For afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect, and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, he shall both cut off the sprigs with pruning hooks, and take away and cut down the branches.

6 They shall be left together unto the fowls of the mountains, and to the beasts of the earth: and the fowls shall summer upon them, and all the beasts of the earth shall winter upon them.

• Left =  "forsaken"
• Isaiah 1:4 Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.

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 beginning hitherto; a nation meted out and trodden under foot, whose land the rivers have spoiled, to the place of the name of the Lord of hosts, the mount Zion.

• Psalms 68:29 Because of thy temple at Jerusalem shall kings bring presents unto thee.
  30 Rebuke the company of spearmen, the multitude of the bulls, with the calves of the people, till every one submit himself with pieces of silver: scatter thou the people that delight in war.
• Psalms 76:11 Vow, and pay unto the Lord your God: let all that be round about him bring presents unto him that ought to be feared.
  12 He shall cut off the spirit of princes: he is terrible to the kings of the earth.
• Romans 9:29 And as Esaias said before, Except the Lord of Sabaoth had left us a seed, we had been as Sodoma, and been made like unto Gomorrha.
  30 What shall we say then? That the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is of faith.
  31 But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness.
  32 Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone;
  33 As it is written, Behold, I lay in Sion a stumbling stone and rock of offence: and whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.

• Exactly 2520 years from the exile of Benjamin, Iceland became an independent nation.

 

•  The first tribe to be conquered by the Assyrians was Manasseh, in 745 B.C. Exactly 2520 years later America became a nation on July 4, 1776.

 

• Study the book: Abrahamic Covenant, (A study outline of the identity of God's people) By E. Raymond Capt - page 25