Isaiah 18
v.1
Woe to the land of whirring wings along the rivers of Cush,
v.2
which sends envoys by sea in papyrus boats over the water. Go, swift messengers, to a people tall and smooth-skinned, to a people feared far and wide, an aggressive nation of strange speech, whose land is divided by rivers.
Cush = Ethiopia Apparently, the Ethiopians had taken Egypt (715 B.C.) and negotiated an alliance with Hezekiah. From the description of the Ethiopians it would seem that the Judeans stood in amazement of them because they were able to subdue the great power of Egypt. However, chapter 18 brings out God’s judgement on this powerful people while intimating that God has a place reserved for them in his overall kingdom purposes.
Connection to Acts 8?
v.3
All you people of the world, you who live on the earth, when a banner is raised on the mountains, you will see it, and when a trumpet sounds, you will hear it.
v.4
This is what the Lord says to me: “I will remain quiet and will look on from my dwelling place, like shimmering heat in the sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.”
Proof that God can choose to be silent in certain seasons.
v.5
For, before the harvest, when the blossom is gone and the flower becomes a ripening grape, he will cut off the shoots with pruning knives, and cut down and take away the spreading branches.
Similar to v.7.
The Lord prunes when things look fruitful for a great harvest is at hand.
v.6
They will all be left to the mountain birds of prey and to the wild animals; the birds will feed on them all summer, the wild animals all winter.
v.7
At that time gifts will be brought to the LORD Almighty from a people tall and smooth-skinned, from a people feared far and wide, an aggressive nation of strange speech, whose land is divided by rivers—the gifts will be brought to Mount Zion, the place of the Name of the LORD Almighty.
The people who have been so carefully describe 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 Yahweh in Jerusalem. Instead of Judah bringing gifts to Ethiopia to placate the king and to join in her cause of rebellion against the Assyrians, the Ethiopians come to Mount Zion to placate the King of the Jews. 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, may be inhabitants of the New Jerusalem.