A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 19: The Desert of the Sea

A Commentary on Isaiah, Part 19: The Desert of the Sea

In the King James Version of the Bible, the Hebrew name כושׁ or Kush (# 3568) is usually translated as Ethiopia. Exceptions to this are found only in the genealogy of the sons of Ham, in Genesis chapter 10, and in the copy of that genealogy which is repeated in 1 Chronicles chapter 1, where the personal name Kush is properly transliterated as Cush. This is a cause of confusion, because the Cush of Genesis chapter 10 was certainly the patriarch of the tribe of Cush which had inhabited Mesopotamia and parts of the adjacent land to the west which had later become known as Arabia. Cush also inhabited parts of the lands of east of the Tigris River which eventually became part of later Persia. However in modern times the word Ethiopia is only associated with the land to the south of Egypt in Africa.

Doing this, the King James translators had only followed the same convention which had been used in the much earlier Greek Septuagint translation of Scripture. There, in the genealogies found in Genesis chapter 10 and in 1 Chronicles chapter 1 the name was rendered as Χους or Chous in Greek. But everywhere else in the Septuagint, the name is rendered with some form of the word Αἰθιοπία or Ethiopia. Interestingly, the Greek word χοῦς is a common noun which was either a unit of measure, or it was used to describe dust or soil. 

The fact that Kush was an empire in Mesopotamia is ascertained in Scripture in Genesis chapter 10, where Nimrod, the son of Kush, had founded an empire as he had ruled over several of the notable cities of Mesopotamia in the early 3rd millennium BC. Then, as we have already explained in this Isaiah commentary, in Judges chapter 3 a king of Mesopotamia called “twice-wicked Cushan” had oppressed Israel for several years. The word כושׁן or Cushan is simply Cush with the letter ן or ‘n’ affixed as a suffix, which in Hebrew means of them. So the very meaning of the name Cushan in Arabia designates that the land belonged to Cush. Where Moses took a wife in the land of Midian, as it is described in Exodus chapter 2, in Numbers chapter 12 she is described as a woman of Cush, where the feminine form of the Hebrew word Cush is translated as Ethiopian. However Midian was in the land later known as Arabia, and that is clearly evident from the context of many passages where the name appears throughout the writings of Moses and Joshua. The only manner in which Zipporah may have justly been accounted a woman of Cush is if the kings of Cush in Mesopotamia had ruled over at least portions of Arabia, and they had, in the time of the Akkadian empire. The Kassites of Mesopotamia were the dominant tribe in the area in the time of Moses and for most of the Judges period. [1] While modern academics speculate that the Kassites were outsiders who invaded Mesopotamia, and that they were not native Akkadian speakers, many factors defy the speculation. The Akkadian language was refined and standardized by the Kassites, Mesopotamian traditions and culture were promoted by them and had flourished under their rule, and the literature of other Mesopotamian languages, such as Sumerian, was translated into Akkadian. [2] Yet there is no evidence that the Kassites had any alien cultural influences, and Scripture associates a Kassite king with Cushan, in Judges chapter 3. 

The first ruler of the Akkadian empire of Nimrod who is famous in history is Sargon of Akkad, who ruled Kish, or Kush, several hundred years after Nimrod, in the 24th century BC. Sargon of Akkad had consolidated a much larger Assyrian empire, and in part 18 of our recent Genesis commentary, titled The Hebrews, we had explained that Sargon had sought to impose the use of the Akkadian language in all of his dominions, even in Elam to the east, which had resisted the imposition. But as we had also explained, for that reason the Assyrians, the Syrians or Aram, the Hebrews, many of the Canaanite tribes, and the later Ethiopians of Africa, who must have been a division of the people of Cush, had all spoken dialects of the language of Akkad, which was the lingua franca of the Akkadian world for nearly eighteen hundred years, from the time of Sargon of Akkad to the end of the Assyrian empire.

In the most notable Hebrew lexicons of the past, such as those of Gesenius, Brown, Driver and Briggs, and even Strong’s, the Hebrew name כושׁ or Kush (# 3568) is not assigned a meaning. In the Akkadian language, however, the word kaššu meant mighty or strong and it was also a title for certain officials, while kaššȗ [the same spelling with different accents in English] was the word for a Kassite, [3] which is evidently the same as the Hebrew word for Cushite, which is evident in Judges chapter 3 and elsewhere in Scripture. However at least some modern lexicons define the Hebrew word for Cush as black, and Cushan as their blackness, for which definitions there is seemingly no ancient etymological basis. Without a clear linguistic connection, the word for Cush does not mean black.

As a digression, on a straight line the distance from the original homeland of Cush in southern Mesopotamia, to the extreme south of the Arabian peninsula closest to Africa, is twelve hundred miles. From there, it is a crossing of only about fifteen miles by sea in order to arrive in the land known as Ethiopia in Africa. This is not a fantastic distance to cover, since in the late third and early second millennia BC much of the Arabian peninsula had been occupied by tribes which had descended from either Shem or Ham, and the peninsula was frequently traversed for purposes of trade. Then Abraham himself, as well as his servants and his grandson Jacob after him, had frequently traveled on foot back-and-forth from Harran in Padan-Aram to Hebron in Palestine, points which are about four hundred and thirty miles apart on a straight line. So it is not fantastic, that Cushites who had branched out from Mesopotamia into Arabia, would have also crossed the straits where the Red Sea flows into the Persian Gulf and established themselves in Africa. 

That there was indeed a Cush, or Ethiopia, in the east, referring to Mesopotamia and the Near East, is evident in the writings of Diodorus Siculus, a Greek historian of the first century BC, although his knowledge of Mesopotamian antiquity was imperfect. The Greeks had no access to most of the ancient inscriptions which have only recently been discovered by archaeologists, so they had to rely on what they were told by the Assyrians or Syrians and others who had inhabited the region, and often they only received propaganda. So in Book 2, chapter 22 of his Library of History, we read the following, where Diodorus had mistaken Cushites, or Kassites, for Assyrians:

1 There is no special need of giving all the names of the kings and the number of years which each of them reigned because nothing was done by them which merits mentioning. For the only event which has been recorded is the despatch by the Assyrians to the Trojans of an allied force, which was under the command of Memnon the son of Tithonus. 2 For when Teutamus, they say, was ruler of Asia, being the twentieth in succession from Ninyas the son of Semiramis, the Greeks made an expedition against Troy with Agamemnon, at a time when the Assyrians had controlled Asia for more than a thousand years. And Priam, who was king of the Troad and a vassal of the king of the Assyrians, being hard pressed by the war, sent an embassy to the king requesting aid; and Teutamus despatched ten thousand Ethiopians and a like number of the men of Susiana along with two hundred chariots, having appointed as general Memnon the son of Tithonus. 3 Now Tithonus, who was at that time general of Persis, was the most highly esteemed of the governors at the king's court, and Memnon, who was in the bloom of manhood, was distinguished both for his bravery and for his nobility of spirit. He also built the palace in the upper city of Susa which stood until the time of the Persian Empire and was called after him Memnonian; moreover, he constructed through the country a public highway which bears the name Memnonian to this time. 4 But the Ethiopians who border upon Egypt dispute this, maintaining that this man was a native of their country, and they point out an ancient palace which to this day, they say, bears the name Memnonian. 5 At any rate, the account runs that Memnon went to the aid of the Trojans with twenty thousand foot-soldiers and two hundred chariots; and he was admired for his bravery and slew many Greeks in the fighting, but was finally ambushed by the Thessalians and slain; whereupon the Ethiopians recovered his body, burned the corpse, and took the bones back to Tithonus. Such is the account concerning Memnon that is given in the royal records, according to what the barbarians say. [4]

So while, according to Diodorus Siculus, the Ethiopians of Africa claimed a heritage which had belonged to their kinsmen in Mesopotamia, whether or not they themselves remembered their own origins after at least two thousand years, the fact is that Memnon was related in the earliest Greek literature, that of Homer and Herodotus, to the founding of Susa, which was east of Mesopotamia and the Tigris River, in what had later become the empire of Persia. With that, we see that the people of Cush were associated with the area of northern Persia, and that is the land which was compassed by the Gihon River, as Moses had explained it in Genesis chapter 2. But those Ethiopians in Africa who had made these claims were not Negros, which is also apparent in the writings of Diodorus Siculus. For this, we shall cite our own paper, The Race of Genesis 10, which was originally written in 2004:

Now to turn to the Kush, or Ethiopia, of Africa. In the first eleven chapters of his third book, Diodorus Siculus draws from much earlier historians (as he always did for whomever he wrote about) to describe the various peoples of African Ethiopia, and it is evident that those tribes contrast with one another quite starkly. The first Ethiopians he discusses are endowed with what we may consider a well-developed form of “western civilization”, for he states “they say that they were the first to be taught to honour the gods and to hold sacrifices and processions and festivals”, they quote Homer in reference to themselves (Iliad 1:423-424), they recount the unsuccessful invasions into their country by Cambyses and Semiramis, and they claim that the Egyptians were originally Ethiopian colonists, led by Osiris. The two types of their writing (like Egypt), popular or demotic and sacred or hieroglyphic, are described, and it is said that the sacred is common among these Ethiopians. Their priests were much like the Egyptian. They believed that their kings gained sovereignty by Divine Providence, their laws and punishments were from custom, and they practiced the same flight of refuge which the Greeks did, which was similar to the Hebrew Levitical cities of refuge. An Ethiopian king under Ptolemy was educated in Greece and studied Philosophy, and aside from a few odd customs, there is no reason to believe that these Ethiopians, whose physical characteristics were not mentioned, were anything but civilized, and not much different than the rest of “western” society. [5]

In stark contrast to those cultured Ethiopians which Diodorus first discussed, beginning at 3.8.1 he says: “But there are also a great many other tribes of the Ethiopians [and here it is apparent that, like “Phoenicia” and other labels, “Ethiopia” has become merely a geographical designation, rather than an ethnographical one], some of them dwelling in the land lying on both banks of the Nile and on the islands in the river, others inhabiting the neighboring country of Arabia [between the Nile and the Red Sea], and others residing in the interior of Libya [the rest of Africa - Sudan here]. The majority of them, and especially those who dwell along the river, “are black in color and have flat noses and wooly hair.” Here it is evident that Diodorus is describing the Nubians and other wandering black tribes of the region. He continues: “As for their spirit they are entirely savage and display the nature of a wild beast...and are as far removed as possible from human kindness to one another...and cultivating none of the practices of civilized life...they present a striking contrast when considered in the light of our own customs.” [6]

Describing these Ethiopians, Diodorus mentioned their skin color and the texture of their hair, which he was not compelled to do describing the first group of Ethiopians, who were civilized, and therefore they could not have looked any different than the rest of the peoples of the Near East or Europe. In Jeremiah chapter 13 there is a verse which is often cited to support the claim that the Ethiopian had always been a Negro, where we read: “23 Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.” Yet this passage does not support the claim. Rather, it is evident in history that the people of Cush had mingled with the Nubians. Therefore, at least many of them were half black and half white, just like a leopard. The first clause in that verse is a Hebrew parallelism, which is a literary device in which the same event, object or phenomenon is described twice consecutively, so that a more complete picture of what is being described is transmitted to the reader. So in this parallelism, the skin of the Ethiopian must be of a similar nature to the coat of a leopard. 

As we hope to have explained regarding the Cushites in Africa in our last presentation in Isaiah here, titled The Burdens of Captivity, the rulers of Ethiopia in the time of Isaiah were certainly not Negros, as the archaeological discoveries of their monuments fully demonstrates, however they evidently had hordes of Nubians with them when they invaded Egypt in the mid-to-late 8th century BC, and they were in the process of occupying Egypt at this very point in the life of Isaiah. 

So in the context of this era in the history of Judah, and also in the context of Isaiah chapter 18 and the prophecy concerning the “land shadowing with wings, which is beyond the rivers of Ethiopia”, or Cush, it is important to understand that there were indeed two lands known as Cush, one which was in and beyond Mesopotamia, and another one which was in Africa, immediately south of Egypt. That is because the land “beyond the rivers of Cush” must have been the land beyond the Euphrates and Tigris rivers which had encompassed the ancient land of Cush. Here in Isaiah we shall also encounter prophecies concerning Cush which relate to the Cush in Africa as they had overcome Egypt at this very time. This shall become evident as we proceed with Isaiah chapter 20:

1 In the year that Tartan came unto Ashdod, (when Sargon the king of Assyria sent him,) and fought against Ashdod, and took it; 

Evidently, Tiglath-Pileser III, who ruled Assyria for 17 years and died about 6 years before the rule of Sargon had begun, had ancient Ashkelon under tribute, but there is no mention of Ashdod in any of the inscriptions which are attributed to his rule. There is no indication of precisely when Tiglath-Pileser III had subjected Ashkelon, which was further south than Ashdod on the Mediterranean coast, but from an inscription which was from the ninth year of his reign we read: “Mitinti of Ashkelon violated the oath he swore to me, against me he revolted.” [7] The record goes on to state that Mitinti was killed for his treachery against Assyria, and replaced on the throne of Ashkelon with another king.

Perhaps about fourteen years later, in an inscription dated to the first year of the reign of Sargon II, king of Assyria, the first surviving mention of Ashdod in Assyrian inscriptions appears, just after Samaria description of the fall of Samaria earlier in the same inscription:

Iamani from Ashdod, afraid of my armed force (lit.: weapons), left his wife and children and fled to the frontier of M[usru] which belongs to Meluhha (i.e., Ethiopia) and hid (lit.: stayed) there like a thief. I installed an officer of mine as governor over his entire large country and its prosperous inhabitants, (thus) aggrandizing (again) the territory belonging to Ashur, the king of the gods. The terror (-inspiring) glamor of Ashur, my lord, overpowered (however) the king of Meluhha and he threw him (i.e. Iamani) in fetters on hands and feet, and sent him to me, to Assyria. I conquered and sacked the towns Shinuhtu (and) Samaria, and all Israel (lit.: "Omri-Land" Bit Hu-um-ri-ia). I caught, like a fish, the Greek (Ionians) who live (on islands) amidst the Western Sea. [8]

In an apparently undated inscription from a time which could not have been much later, we read:

(Property of Sargon, etc., king of Assyria, etc.) conqueror of Samaria (Sa-mir-i-na) and of the entire (country of) Israel (Bit-Hu-um-ri-a) who despoiled Ashdod (and) Shinuhti, who caught the Greeks who (live on islands) in the sea, like fish, who exterminated Kasku, all Tabali and Cilicia (Hilakjtu), who chased away Midas (Mi-ta-a) king of Musku, who defeated Musur (Mu-su-ri) in Rapihu, who declared Hanno, king of Gaza, as booty, who subdued the seven kings of the country Ia’, a district on Cyprus (Ia-ad-na-na), (who) dwell (on an island) in the sea, at (a distance of) a seven-day journey. [9]

Later in this inscription the fall of Samaria and the deportations of the people of the capital city of Ephraim is described in further detail. Ashdod was further north than Ashkelon, but apparently it was not taken by the Assyrians until after the death of Tiglath-Pileser III, and apparently not until the time of Sargon II. The earliest inscription, from the first year of the reign of Sargon, is ambiguous because it does not indicate whether Iamani had already been a vassal of Sargon at the time when he had fled.

Here in Isaiah, the subjection of Ashdod to Assyria is mentioned as a historical fact, but according to these inscriptions it would have been in the same year as that of the fall of Samaria. However Isaiah does not explicitly record, or even notice, the actual time of the fall of Samaria in his writings. The prophet mentioned Samaria in chapter 10 where the Word of Yahweh had asked “11 Shall I not, as I have done unto Samaria and her idols, so do to Jerusalem and her idols?” Yet when that remark was made Samaria could not have already fallen, because according to Isaiah, the death of Ahaz had not yet passed, and Samaria did not fall until the sixth year of Hezekiah, his son and successor. So the mention of Ashdod here certainly does indicate that Samaria must have fallen around this same time, even if it is not mentioned again until Isaiah chapter 36, where it is mentioned retrospectively in words attributed to the king of Assyria. So evidently, Samaria is no longer even a concern of Isaiah after his last prophetic statements in reference to the city, and even at the time when it had fallen, and instead we read:

2 At the same time spake the LORD by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, Go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot. 

The loincloth and sandals would be the absolute minimal items of clothing that a man may wear in order to maintain both modesty and comfort. But just as the prophets Ezekiel, Daniel and Jeremiah were all tried by Yahweh in various ways, here Isaiah was also tried, and evidently so that the prophet would be an example to the people, he was compelled to walk about completely naked and barefoot for three years, as he had announced the warnings he was given in reference to Egypt and Ethiopia:

3 And the LORD said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia; 

The Septuagint translators had interpreted two periods of three years here, where Brenton’s translation reads: “3 And the Lord said, As my servant Esaias has walked naked and barefoot three years, there shall be three years for signs and wonders to the Egyptians and Ethiopians”. The reading in the Dead Sea Scrolls Bible supports the Hebrew of the Masoretic Text.

So Samaria had fallen around this same time that Isaiah’s three years had begun, and Isaiah must have trodden Judah for three years warning the people about Egypt and Ethiopia. The text seems to indicate that Isaiah had walked his three years from the time when Ashdod had fallen to Sargon II, which would have been about 721 to 718 BC, according to the popular chronologies. His having done this from the time that Samaria had fallen would have made his message an even more ominous warning to the people of Judah, in spite of the fact that Samaria is not mentioned here explicitly. Isaiah would have walked until at least the ninth year of Hezekiah king of Judah. As we had explained in our last presentation in Isaiah, The Burdens of Captivity:

In the time of Isaiah, as he had recorded these prophecies and announced them before the people of Judah and Jerusalem, this would have served as a warning, not to turn to the Egyptians for relief from the invading Assyrians. At this point in the ministry of Isaiah, Ahaz had died, as we read at the end of chapter 14 where this series of burdens had begun, and Hezekiah his son would ascend to the throne. So although Isaiah does not mention Hezekiah by name until the fourteenth year of his reign, here Hezekiah is king and we can certainly assume that he had heard this warning.

Of course, there are even further warnings which Isaiah had made at a later time, and which Hezekiah certainly had heard, which are recorded in Isaiah chapters 30 and 31. So in that same presentation we had also discussed the fact that Hezekiah did not heed these warnings, and had nevertheless turned to call on the help of the Egyptians, hoping that they could provide him relief from the Assyrians, and the Assyrians somehow discovered his treachery, since he had already agreed to be their vassal, as it is recorded in 2 Kings chapter 18. Here, where the warnings concerning Egypt and Ethiopia are recorded, the folly of Hezekiah’s having turned to Egypt for help is readily apparent:

4 So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt. 5 And they shall be afraid and ashamed of Ethiopia their expectation, and of Egypt their glory. 

Evidently the Septuagint translators had misunderstood the intentions of the prophet here, as they rendered verse 5, as Brenton has it: “5  And the Egyptians being defeated shall be ashamed of the Ethiopians, in whom they had trusted; for they were their glory.” The Egyptians are not the concern of Yahweh here, and Isaiah walked three years to warn Judah about turning to Egypt, not to warn the Egyptians. Yet the people of Judah would be ashamed at the defeat of the Egyptians and Ethiopians. So later, in Isaiah chapter 30 we read: “1 Woe to the rebellious children, saith the LORD, that take counsel, but not of me; and that cover with a covering, but not of my spirit, that they may add sin to sin: 2 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 shadow of Egypt!” These are evidently those five cities in the land of Egypt which would speak the language of Canaan. The next verse of that chapter repeats a warning which we have seen here in verse 5: “3 Therefore shall the strength of Pharaoh be your shame, and the trust in the shadow of Egypt your confusion.”

We had also already mentioned here in The Burdens of Captivity that the Ethiopians had come to rule all of Egypt by this time, since it is now about 721 BC according to the popular chronologies. So the Ethiopians had been mentioned here because Yahweh, the God of Israel, certainly had known that the kings of Ethiopia had conquered and occupied Egypt, an event which had occurred no later than 728 BC, and perhaps the process had begun a decade or two earlier. The Assyrians had never conquered Ethiopia proper, although Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, had later tried and was defeated.

Speaking of Taharqa, the fourth king of the Kushite 25th Dynasty of Egypt who ruled from about 690 to 664 BC, we read, from the Britannica website:

Taharqa succeeded his cousin Shebitku on the throne. Early in his reign, he supported Palestine’s resistance against King Sennacherib of Assyria. In 671, however, Taharqa’s army was defeated by Sennacherib’s son Esarhaddon, who captured Memphis, together with its royal harem, and took a great amount of spoils; he set up a new Assyrian administration, entrusting the government and collection of tribute to the native chiefs. On Esarhaddon’s withdrawal from Egypt, Taharqa returned from his refuge in Upper Egypt and massacred the Assyrian garrisons. He held control over Egypt until he was completely routed by Esarhaddon’s son Ashurbanipal, after which he fled south to Nubia, where he died and was buried in a large pyramid at Nuri. [10]

Here, we must mention once again the many problems of the chronology of the period. In relation to the later years of Hezekiah, perhaps five or six years from this point in Isaiah, we read in 2 Kings chapter 19: “8 So Rabshakeh returned, and found the king of Assyria warring against Libnah: for he had heard that he was departed from Lachish. 9 And when he heard say of Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, Behold, he is come out to fight against thee: he sent messengers again unto Hezekiah, saying, 10 Thus shall ye speak to Hezekiah king of Judah, saying, Let not thy God in whom thou trustest deceive thee, saying, Jerusalem shall not be delivered into the hand of the king of Assyria.” However Tirhakah, or Taharqa as the name is frequently spelled in academic writings, is said in the popular chronologies to have begun ruling Egypt in 690 BC, which is about ten years too late for Hezekiah and 2 Kings chapter 19 according to the popular Biblical chronologies. This works into the same problem which we had discussed earlier in this commentary on Isaiah, in part 1 and in part 7 where, for unrelated reasons, we had even suggested that perhaps the fall of Samaria had really occurred in 711, rather than 721 BC. So that would also bring these events to align with interpretations of Egyptian history, but then it would bring them into conflict with interpretations of Assyrian history. For now we must live with the popular chronologies, since it may take months or longer to make our own reconstructions and attempt to determine the source of these conflicts.

Now there is another prophetic statement portraying the futility of seeking help from the Egyptians, where the text of verse 6 also supports our interpretation of verse 5:

6 And the inhabitant of this isle shall say in that day, Behold, such is our expectation, whither we flee for help to be delivered from the king of Assyria: and how shall we escape? 

Hezekiah had indeed seen the fulfillment of this prophecy in his day. In an inscription of Sennacherib, which we had also cited in a different context in part 16 of this commentary, just before the Assyrian siege of Jerusalem is recorded, we read the following:

In the continuation of my campaign I besieged Beth-Dagon, Joppa, Banai-Barqa, Azuru, cities belonging to Sidqia who did not bow to my feet quickly (enough); I conquered (them) and carried their spoils away. The officials, the patricians and the (common) people of Ekron — who had thrown Padi, their king, into fetters (because he was) loyal to (his) solemn oath (sworn) by the god Ashur, and had handed him over to Hezekiah, the [Judahite] (Ha-za-qi-(i)a-ú Ia-ú-da-ai) — (and) he (Hezekiah) held him in prison, unlawfully, as if he (Padi) be an enemy— had become afraid and had called (for help) upon the kings of Egypt (Mus(u)ri) (and) the bowmen, the chariot(-corps) and the cavalry of the king of Ethiopia (Meluhha), an army beyond counting — and they (actually) had come to their assistance. In the plain of Eltekeh (Al-ta-qu-ú), their battle lines were drawn up against me and they sharpened their weapons. Upon a trust (-inspiring) oracle (given) by Ashur, my lord, I fought with them and inflicted a defeat upon them. In the mêlée of the battle, I personally captured alive the Egyptian charioteers with the(ir) princes and (also) the charioteers of the king of Ethiopia. I besieged Eltekeh (and) Timnah (Ta-am-na-a), conquered (them) and carried their spoils away. I assaulted Ekron and killed the officials and patricians who had committed the crime and hung their bodies on poles surrounding the city. The (common) citizens who were guilty of minor crimes, I considered prisoners of war. The rest of them, those who were not accused of crimes and misbehavior, I released. I made Padi, their king, come from Jerusalem (Ur-sa-li-im-mu) and set him as their lord on the throne, imposing upon him the tribute (due) to me (as) overlord. [11]

We do not know how Sennacherib had gotten Hezekiah to release Padi, because in the very next line of the inscription Hezekiah’s failure to submit to Sennacherib, and the resulting siege of Jerusalem are recorded. However in any event, seeing the Egyptians and Ethiopians defeated by Assyria in the south of Palestine, and the men who were taken captive just as the Word of Yahweh had announced here, Hezekiah’s hopes for relief must have quickly evaporated. Apparently, after the siege of Jerusalem the Assyrians would not molest the Egyptians or Ethiopians again until the time of Esarhaddon, the son of Sennacherib, who had conquered Lower Egypt but not all of Egypt. His son and successor, the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal, would conquer nearly all of Egypt, as far as Thebes, which he sacked and destroyed, but he had never reached Ethiopia.

This completes our commentary for Isaiah chapter 20, and now we shall proceed with chapter 21:

1 The burden of the desert of the sea. As whirlwinds in the south pass through; so it cometh from the desert, from a terrible land. 2 A grievous vision is declared unto me; the treacherous dealer dealeth treacherously, and the spoiler spoileth. Go up, O Elam: besiege, O Media; all the sighing thereof have I made to cease. 

Evidently storms must have come from the direction of the deserts to the south of Judah with some regularity. The Hebrew word for south, נגב or negeb (# 5045), is a general term which means south, and is often used in contexts along with words meaning north, east and west. But in many places the New American Standard Bible has transliterated the word as though it was a place name for a particular desert, called the Negev by the Edomite Israelis of modern times. In my opinion, such practices reflect a thoroughly Judaized mindset among the translators who keep them. However it is true that in ancient Israel, the south was associated with deserts, so the word נגב or negeb is derived from “an unused root which means parched”, according to Strong’s Concordance, where Gesenius and Brown, Driver, Briggs agree. But the word was often used to refer to the south in contexts which have little or nothing to do with any specific area to the south of Judah, so the meaning south appears to have been a colloquial development, rather than a reference to any one particular desert. 

Here, the whirlwinds are merely a metaphor describing Elam and Media, and they are certainly not in the south. Neither is the “desert of the sea” in the south, or at least, entirely in the south, because later in this chapter, in verse 9, it becomes apparent that the objective is Babylon. The site of ancient Babylon is about 530 miles east of Jerusalem, and at a latitude which is only slightly more to the north. In an earlier prophecy of the fall of Babylon, which is made here in Isaiah at a time when Babylon itself was still subject to Assyria, in Isaiah chapter 13 the Medes were mentioned explicitly where the Word of Yahweh had said “17 Behold, I will stir up the Medes against them, which shall not regard silver; and as for gold, they shall not delight in it.” So here in this vision it is prophesied that Elam, one of the principal tribes of what would later be known as Persia, would be in league with the Medes in that endeavor.

The text of the Septuagint presents much of the language here as if Isaiah had expressed it in the first person, referring to himself. While some of the language does agree, for example as Isaiah describes himself as having travailed when he saw this vision, in verse 3, some of the first person language refers to Yahweh, as this is His Word, and Isaiah only relates it. So we cannot agree with the Septuagint readings at verse 2, for example, where it has “The Elamites are upon me, and the ambassadors of the Persians come against me”, as if Isaiah himself was being besieged. The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible generally agrees with the translation of the King James Version in this passage. Rather, Yahweh is stating here that He is calling the Elamites and Medes to besiege, and that doing so, He has made their sighing to cease. When it is realized that the objective is Babylon, the reason why their sighing would cease becomes apparent, because the Assyrian and Babylonian empires had long oppressed them. Once Persia had taken Babylon, the Persians had the hegemony over the surrounding region for several centuries.

The Kassites, which we would assert are a branch of the people of Cush, had ruled Babylon for about 400 years, from the time of the fall of the Amorite empire of Hammurabi to the middle of the 12th century BC, when they were invaded and overthrown by Elamites from the east. Elam was a district in what is now Iran, adjacent to the Tigris River, with the Persian Gulf to the south. From that time, the Assyrian empire began to develop and from the late 10th century, Assyria would dominate the entire region for over three hundred years. But as we have explained earlier in this commentary, Babylon had continued to compete with Assyria, and in the last years of his own rule Tiglath-Pileser III had added the title King of Babylon to his title as King of Assyria. After the fall of Assyria, Nebuchadnezzar II had asserted Babylonian hegemony over the former subjects of the Assyrian empire, and that new empire of Babylon, which did not materialize until the end of the 7th century BC, which is over a hundred years after Isaiah had written this oracle, is the focus of this and the earlier prophecies against Babylon.

But that does not explain this epithet, the “desert of the sea”. At that time, Babylonia and most of Mesopotamia were quite fertile, and its agriculture supported large populations. Therefore they were not a literal desert, and of course, they were not in a literal sea. The site of ancient Babylon is about 300 miles from the current shore of the Persian Gulf, the closest sea, and over 500 miles east of the Mediterranean.

However here in Isaiah, in chapters 8 and 18. In chapter 8 we read “7 Now therefore, behold, the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river, strong and many, even the king of Assyria, and all his glory: and he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks: 8 And he shall pass through Judah; he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to the neck; and the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel.” Then, in chapter 18, speaking of Israel there is a reference to a people “whose land the rivers have spoiled”, evidently referring to those same Assyrians. Later in that same chapter we see a reference to the river of Egypt, which is actually a description of the race of the Egyptians where it says: “4 And the Egyptians will I give over into the hand of a cruel lord; and a fierce king shall rule over them, saith the Lord, the LORD of hosts. 5 And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and dried up.” The Nile River was never dried up, but today there are no longer any recognizable Egyptians. So the race of the Egyptians was dried up.

So rivers often refer to races of people, and we would assert that in many places in Scripture, the sea is used as a metaphor for all of the world’s peoples, since all rivers ultimately empty into the sea. So later in Isaiah, in chapter 27, there is an oracle which says: “1 In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.” There we shall interpret that passage as a prophecy wherein Yahweh promises to destroy the seed of the serpent of Genesis 3:15, the tares which the devil had sown among the wheat, as Christ had explained that same phenomenon in Matthew chapter 13. In Revelation chapter 12, the dragon would make perpetual war with the seed of the woman of Genesis 3:15, who is embodied in the Revelation as a woman representing the twelve tribes of Israel, the bride of Christ. The nature of the dragon itself is explained in Revelation chapter 12.

From Habakkuk chapter 3: “7 I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction: and the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble. 8 Was the LORD displeased against the rivers? was thine anger against the rivers? was thy wrath against the sea, that thou didst ride upon thine horses and thy chariots of salvation?” Of course, Yahweh God would have no reason to be angry with literal rivers or the literal sea, but here also, rivers and the sea are metaphors for races and people. So a little further on in the chapter we read: “15 Thou didst walk through the sea with thine horses, through the heap of great waters.”

Returning to Matthew chapter 13, Christ had given the parable of the net as part of His explanation of the parable of the tares in the field. There we read that a net takes all of the fish out of the sea, and the good kind, or race, of fish are preserved, while the bad kind is disposed of by being cast into the fire. In Matthew chapter 25, all nations of men are separated on sight, as a shepherd would separate the sheep from the goats, and all of the goats are cast into “the fire prepared for the devil and his angels”. In the Revelation, in chapter 20, the devil is cast into the lake of fire , and then “whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” .

On account of this, in the opening verse of Revelation chapter 21 we read: “1 And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.” Here we would assert that there was no more sea because the greater mass of the world’s population consists of goat nations which shall be cast into the lake of fire. So all that is left in the end is the City of God descended from heaven, upon the gates of which are inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel.

Like all of Isaiah, this prophecy has a near-vision fulfillment, which had occurred in 539 BC when the Persians and Medes had conquered the Neo-Babylonian Empire, but it also has a far-vision fulfillment which is not yet fulfilled, since Mystery Babylon has not yet fallen. Once Babylon falls, and we see the return of Christ and the Marriage Supper of the Lamb with the people whose names are written on those gates, and there shall indeed be no more sea. The sea here represents the people of the ancient world, and it is a desert because they have produced no fruits worthy of God, who has promised to deliver His kingdom to a nation bearing its fruits, the tribes of the nation of the so-called “lost” children of Israel.

There is an over-arching theme which is expressed in all of these burdens and some of the other early prophecies in Isaiah, and which is explained in detail in the later prophecies in the final twenty-six chapters of this book, that Israel would come to possess the nations, all of the nations, of the ancient world. That also has near and far vision fulfillments, and presenting those later chapters, we hope to explain precisely how they were, or how they shall, be fulfilled. But for now, these burdens actually prophesy of how those nations shall destroy one another, and in the process, they also destroy themselves. Each of them, Egypt, Assyria, the Cushites of Babylonia and Ethiopia, and even the Hittites, Hurrians and Amorites, Canaanite tribes who had also had great empires at one time or another, had all sought to rebuild the Babel of Genesis chapter 11, contrary to the will of Yahweh which had been expressed in that chapter, and here their desires are described as the “desert of the sea”, because there was no fruit in any of them.

In the meantime, this vision which Isaiah had seen is evidently so grievous, that is caused him much pain and anguish:

3 Therefore are my loins filled with pain: pangs have taken hold upon me, as the pangs of a woman that travaileth: I was bowed down at the hearing of it; I was dismayed at the seeing of it. 4 My heart panted, fearfulness affrighted me: the night of my pleasure hath he turned into fear unto me. 

Perhaps Isaiah’s pain was so severe when he saw this vision, because of what would become of Judah in the process of the rise and fall of Babylon. When the Persians took Babylon, for the most part there was little or no fighting in the city itself, but there were battles outside of the city, as the Babylonian king Nabonidus sought to defend his kingdom. Many Judahites who had been brought to Babylon in the captivity must have been involved in that fighting, along with many of the Israelites who had dwelt in the cities of the Medes and in parts of Persia since the time of the Assyrian deportations. In any event, what troubled Isaiah was not fully recorded here, and it must have been terrifying, but he only gives a comparatively succinct description.

5 Prepare the table, watch in the watchtower, eat, drink: arise, ye princes, and anoint the shield. 

The words of the prophet in verses 3 and 4, which described his having been terrified at the sight of this vision, were a digression. This call to prepare the table is for the Medes and Elamites mentioned in verse 2, as a message to them to equip and prepare themselves for what is to come, which is their role in the destruction of the empire of Babylon. So the call to “watch in the watchtower” is also an appeal to be prepared, in this case to prepare for war, and the admonition to drink and “anoint the shield” is for that same reason, the shield certainly being indicative of a preparation for war.

Now once the Persians and Medes are prepared for war, in Isaiah’s vision Yahweh once again addresses the prophet himself. This method of prophetic utterance is later used elsewhere in the prophets, and again in the Revelation of Yahshua Christ, wherein John the apostle is shown many visions, and he is asked to describe them in his own words.

6 For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth. 7 And he saw a chariot with a couple of horsemen, a chariot of asses, and a chariot of camels; and he hearkened diligently with much heed: 

What the watchman had seen here seems to represent a gradual gathering of troops and chariots used not in the battle itself, but in the gathering of materials for war. So in the next statement the watchman seems to be exasperated:

8 And he cried, A lion: My lord, I stand continually upon the watchtower in the daytime, and I am set in my ward whole nights: 

So here, before he expresses his exasperation, he saw a lion, which seems to represent something horrible which is about to happen very quickly, as a lion stalks and then suddenly lunges upon its prey. So just as suddenly, it seems, we read in the next verse:

9 And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground. 

Perhaps the lion is also a Messianic prophecy, as Christ is the lion of the tribe of Judah, and as a lion suddenly seizes its prey, Christ shall return with the fall of Mystery Babylon and destroy His enemies.

The Persians and Medes destroyed the Babylonian empire, and took it for themselves, but Babylon itself was not destroyed at that time. Rather, as later prophecies in Isaiah also suggest, Cyrus the king of Persia was able to take Babylon without the prolonged siege and battles which are anticipated in the conquest of a mighty city. So while Babylon the ancient city eventually succumbed to decay and the dust of history, Isaiah’s words here seem to be more relevant to the far vision, and the anticipated fall of the Mystery Babylon of the Revelation. So it is not a coincidence that the very next verse, the final utterance in this burden of the desert of the sea, evokes the words of Christ in the parable of the wheat and the tares, as Isaiah makes a declaration:

10 O my threshing, and the corn of my floor: that which I have heard of the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, have I declared unto you. 

The word translated as corn is properly grain, as the English of the 17th century used corn to describe grain, and not maize which was generally not known to Englishmen until the settling of North America.

These words also evoke the words of John the Baptist which had been spoken in reference to Christ, as they are recorded in Matthew chapter 3: “11 I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: 12 Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” When Christ finally purges His floor, which is described in Revelation chapter 19, that would indeed be the end of the desert of the sea.

For now, we shall pause our commentary on Isaiah here, and hope to return to finish these visions of burdens in our next presentation.

Footnotes

1 Kassites, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kassites, accessed January 23rd, 2025.

2 Kassite Dynasty, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kassite_dynasty, accessed January 23rd, 2025.

3 The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Oriental Institute, Chicago, IL, A. Leo Oppenheim, Editor-in-Charge, Volume 8, K, 1971, pp. 292-293

4 Library of History, Diodorus Siculus, translated by C. H. Oldfather, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1933, Volume 1, pp. 423-425 [2.22.1-5].

5 ibid., Volume 3, pp. 89-103 [3.1.1-3.6.4].

6 ibid., Volume 3, pp. 103-105 [3.8.1-3].

7 Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, Volume I: Historical Records of Assyria from the Earliest Times to Sargon, Daniel David Luckenbill, Ph.D., University of Chicago Press, 1926, p. 280.

8 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3rd edition, James Pritchard, editor, 1969, Harvard University Press, p. 285.

9 ibid., p. 284.

10 Taharqa, Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Taharqa, accessed January 23rd, 2025.

11 Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, pp. 287-288.