Isaiah 18:2

2. By the sea The Nile. Any distinguished waters were called seas.

Saying This is useless. The word is not in the original, nor is it essential to the sense of the passage.

Go, ye This is addressed to the vessels on the Nile made of papyrus (bulrushes) bark. This plant, now seldom found, anciently abounded along the Nile and its branches, and from its inner bark the earlier writing material was obtained, as well as from its strips coverings for boat frames; thus making “ships” light for sailing on the level Nile, and portable for its cataracts.

To a nation scattered and peeled A description of the Ethiopians. Better, tall, or drawn out, and smooth. So the original. To a people of smooth skin, lithe, active, and terrible, or much to be feared, for their fierceness.

From their beginning From that time and beyond, or from long ago; referring, perhaps, to an antiquity sufficient to account for the constitutional difference in blackness, smoothness of skin, etc.

A nation meted out Still the Ethiopians. The Hebrew is, קו קו , ( kav, kav,) line, line. The English translation implies a measuring line thoroughly used. (The repeated words imply this.) The measuring line was in war used upon buildings devoted to destruction. By figure it may here mean all destroyers, and hence the term is of active signification, not passive; and if this be active, so the next word. Then it is not trodden, but treading down; a people treading and crushing; an all powerful and victorious people.

Spoiled This also is an inadequate rendering, and was made on an incorrect theory of the passage. It rather means, dissects, cuts up. The branches of the Upper Nile divide the country into many sections.