The company of the Ashurites have made thy benches of ivory. — The literal rendering of this clause (with two words of doubtful meaning left blank) is, they made thy... of tooth (ivory), daughter of... The sense will depend upon the filling up of these blanks. For the first there need be no difficulty. The word is used in Exodus 26:16 of the boards of the tabernacle, and here it is undoubtedly used of some planking about the ship; but it is in the singular number. It is hardly likely, therefore, to mean “benches” (i.e., seats for the oarsmen), since there were usually two or three tiers of these on each side of the ship. It is now generally taken collectively of the planking of the deck. If the Hebrew text, as it stands, is quite correct, we must read the other word “daughter of Ashurites,” for there is no authority for rendering “daughter” by company. It is difficult or impossible to make any intelligible sense of this; but if the two Hebrew words now written separately be joined together, we shall have “in box-wood,” the word being the same as in Isaiah 60:13. There will still be a little doubt, as there is so often in Scripture, as to the exact wood intended, whether box-wood or the sherbin-cedar; but the general sense is plain — “ they have made thy deck of ivory, inlaid in box-wood.”
Isles of Chittim. — Chittim is the Old Testament name for Cyprus, and hence “isles of Chittim” (as in Jeremiah 2:10) stands for the islands and coasts whose fleets, in coming to the East, made their rendezvous at Cyprus. Thither were brought both the ivory from the African coast and the precious woods from various quarters.