Isaiah18chapter 18

The land beyond the rivers of Cush is Nubia, up the Nile past the cataracts, in what is now Sudan. In these years Nubian kings ruled Egypt as its twenty-fifth dynasty, and they worked hard to build a western coalition against Assyria. Their envoys turning up in Jerusalem is exactly the diplomacy this chapter describes.

The vessels of bulrushes are real Nile craft. Boats were bundled together from papyrus reeds — light enough to be carried around the rapids, fast on the water, and used for long river journeys. The description of the people as tall and smooth-skinned matches what Greek writers said of the Nubians centuries later.

The signalling in the middle of the chapter is how news moved. A banner raised on a bare mountain and a trumpet blown were how a whole region was summoned; the message goes out to all the inhabitants of the world, and the world is told to watch.

Then God says he will sit still and look on, quiet as the shimmering heat before harvest and the dew cloud in harvest heat — and act at the exact moment a vinedresser acts. Before the grapes ripen, the pruner goes through with hooks, cuts off the spreading shoots, and throws them down; the cuttings are left for the birds of the mountains in summer and the beasts in winter. An empire is pruned in a single pass and left where it falls.