Isaiah 18:7

"In that time shall a present be brought to Jehovah of hosts from a people tall and smooth, even from a people terrible from their beginning onward, a nation that meteth out and treadeth down, whose land the rivers divide, to the place of the name of Jehovah of hosts, the mount Zion."

Despite the fact of there being no pagan records of such a gift ever having been sent from Ethiopia to Jerusalem, it certainly took place. Biblical records need no confirmation from pagan sources; but the opposite is always true.

Besides that, in all probability, what is prophesied here is the conversion of many Ethiopians in the Messianic era, as frequently prophesied, not only here, but throughout the Bible. See Isaiah 2:3; 11:10; 60-62; Psalms 68:31; 87:4, and Romans 15:16.

GOD'S PROOF OF HIS PROPHECIES

In this chapter we have another example of how God's prophecies are "proved" by their very presentation, a phenomenon this writer first noticed in work on his Commentary on Micah (Vol. 2 in the Minor Prophets Series).

A. The example in Micah. This great prophet announced the future total destruction of Samaria in the most graphic language (Micah 1:6,7). Of course, critical scholars must deny all predictive prophecy, it matters not at all upon what grounds; but it has always occurred as a mystery to us why the prophet who predicted over seven hundred years before the event the very town where the Son of God would be born should be questioned regarding the authenticity of his prophecy against Samaria.

God, however, built in the proof of this prophecy in the bizarre behavior of the prophet who gave it. Note:

"Micah 1:8 - For this, I will lament and wail; I will go stripped and naked; I will go wailing like the jackals, and a lamentation like the ostriches."

Now, who can imagine a man taking off all of his clothes, except perhaps a small loin cloth, going up and down among the people crying the blood-curdling screams of a jackal and the horrible moanings of an ostrich and yelling his heart out that Samaria is going to be destroyed, when at the very moment of such antics everybody on earth knew that Samaria had already been destroyed? How can such a thing be imagined? Why then did Micah behave in such a bizarre fashion? The answer is obvious. The very idea that Samaria would be destroyed appeared as an absolute impossibility to the whole nation; and Micah was striving to get their attention and to persuade them to heed his prophecy. Otherwise, that is, if the town had already been demolished, whatever authority remained would have locked the man up as a raving lunatic. Thus, in the very behavior of the prophet, God locked up the proof of its authenticity and of its existence before the event.

B. The example in this chapter. That the embassy from Ethiopia had to come before the Assyrian invasion is inherent in the fact that if no invasion had been threatened, they would have sent no embassy at all. The fact of Isaiah's encouragement to that embassy being composed of the most solemn assurances (prophecies) of the destruction of an entire Assyrian army is all the proof that anyone ever needed of the authenticity of it and of its existence before the event.