Fine linen with broidered work. — To a modern sailor “fine linen “may seem both an extravagant and an insufficient material for a ship’s sails, but the State ships of antiquity were often fitted out in this way, and the sails embroidered in colours in place of a pennon. The clause literally is, Linen with embroidery from Egypt was for thy spreading out (sail), to be to thee for a sign.
Isles of Elishah. — In Genesis 10:4; 1 Chronicles 1:7, Elishah is mentioned among the sons of Javan, or Ionia. The regions here referred to are the coasts of Asia Minor, where an abundant supply of the murex (from which came the famous purple dye) was obtained, when the quantity on the Tyrian coast was insufficient for its manufactures. “That which covered thee” is the awning spread over the ship’s deck.