Our chapter is connected with the overthrow of the nations, predicted at the close of the preceding section, and yet forms a scene sufficiently distinct to be treated separately. It is a deeply interesting appendix to it, as is plain from its being no new burden, which opens chapter six. and distinguishes the judgment of Egypt from the subject before us. This it is well to notice, because some Christians, and among them Vitringa, have fallen into the error of supposing that Egypt is the “land shadowing with wings,” addressed in verse 1, and that the Egyptians are the people to whom the message is sent in verse 2, and some of whom are brought to the grateful worship of God in verse 7. The reader need not be surprised at this confusion in a commentator so learned and otherwise eminent; for there is hardly a portion of Isaiah which has given rise to greater discord and more evident bewilderment among men of note, from Eusebius of Caesarea, (who saw in it the land of Judea in apostolic times, sending Christian doctrine to all the world, an interpretation founded on the ἀποστέλλων.... ἐπιστολὰς βιβλίνας of the LXX.) down to Aria Montanus, who applied it to America, converted to Christ by the preaching and arms of the Spaniards.
The right understanding of the chapter depends on seeing that the Jewish nation are those intended in verses 2, 7, and this, not in the days of Sennacherib, but in the future crisis. A few expressions, especially in verse 1, may be obscure, but the general scope is remarkably plain and of exceeding interest.
“The land shadowing (or, whirring) with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Cush,” (i.e., beyond the Nile and the Euphrates,) means a country outside the limits of those nations which up to the prophet's day had menaced or meddled with Israel. Egypt and Assyria were the chief of those powers; for there was an Asiatic as well as an African Cush. The land in question lay (not necessarily contiguous to, but it might be far) beyond either of these countries. This comparatively distant land espouses the cause of Israel; but the protection would be ineffectual in result, however loud the proffer and the preparation. The use of “wings” to convey the idea of a cover for the oppressed or defenseless is too common to need proofs.
The second verse shows, in addition to the previous characteristics of this future ally of the Jews, that it is a maritime power; for it sends its ambassadors in light vessels (literally of “bulrush” or “papyrus") on the face of the waters. Israel is the object of their anxiety. “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 attempt to apply this description to the Egyptians, or the Ethiopians, has largely affected the view taken of the epithets here applied; but I see no sufficient reason to question the general accuracy of our authorized version, which, as predicating them of Israel, yields a clear and good sense. The difference between the land in the first verse, which sends out its messengers and ships in quest of the dispersed people, hitherto so formidable, but of late ravaged by their impetuous enemies, stands on no minute points of verbal criticism, but on the general bearing of the context, which the English-reading Christian is quite able to judge.
Thus far we have seen the intervention of this unnamed land, described as the would-be protector of Israel, actively engaged with their swift ships in their friendly mission in quest of that scattered people.
But another enters the scene who puts an arrest on the zeal of man. (Ver. 3-4) Universal attention is demanded. Great events tremble in the balances. Signs are given visibly and audibly. “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. For as the Lord said unto me, I will take my rest, I will consider in my dwelling-place.” God is not favoring this busy enterprise. Man is active; Jehovah, as it were, retires and watches. It is like the parching heat just before the lightning, as the dewy cloud in the heat of harvest: a moment of deep stillness and suspense, after immense efforts to gather in the Jews by the patronage of the maritime nation of verses 1 and 2. All has seemed to flourish: but what is man without God? “For afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect, and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, he shall both cut off the springs with pruning books, and take away and cut down the branches.” Thus total failure of the whole plan ensues. Everything had seemed to betoken a speedy ingathering of good to Israel and their national hopes seemed to be on the eve of being realized, when God brought all to naught, and lets loose the old passions of the Gentiles against His people. The issue is that “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.” (Ver. 5-6.)
It was not the Lord's time; and yet it was. For “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.” Thus will the presumptuous help of man be rebuked, as well as the renewed wrath of the nations once more preying on the poor but loved people of Jehovah. For as surely as they turn again to rend Israel, He will appear in the midst of the desolation, and with His own mighty hand accomplish that which man as vainly seeks to effect as to frustrate. The Jewish nation, at that very season, shall be brought a present to Jehovah; and they shall come not empty-handed, but emptied of self, with lowly, grateful hearts to the Lord in Mount Zion, after their final escape from Gentile fury, in His mercy which endures forever.