Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God (Isaiah 18)

Isaiah chapter 18 once again has very few notes, and it's a strange and rather opaque passage in meaning. I ended up doing some research, and found that some consider this to be one of the most difficult to understand passages in the Bible. One commentary I read summed up the chapter as essentially that Ethiopia was offering an alliance with Judah against Assyria, but God said he had no desire for an alliance, and this chapter was just a "No thanks" from God.

Something I find interesting about this as a side note that I'm going to babble a bit here about to fill out the post is the questionable nature of some of the translation here, particularly "Ethiopia". The Hebrew word here is "Cush" which the KJV sometimes renders directly, particularly in Genesis chapter ten, where Cush is one of the sons of Ham and the father of Nimrod. I seem to recall vaguely that there is some controversy about what land exactly Cush refers to, many early scholars thinking it's just the Hebrew word for Ethiopia; however some archeological evidence has turned up evidencing that Cush was a kingdom in its own right, mainly existing in modern-day northern Sudan, and at times even ruling over the Nile region. Supposedly, in the time that Isaiah was written, Cush was one of the main powers in the region, a rival to Assyria in the south. Verse one, which in the KJV mentions "the land shadowing with wings", might be better translated "the land buzzing with insect wings", and other translations do something along those lines; the Nile region was known for having a lot of insect life.

I suppose I should comment on verse six, which the SAB calls cruel. It indeed sounds like a sad fate for the Ethiopians/Cushites, but there's no indication that this is a punishment from God, but rather it's just a prophecy of their eventual fate.