Ye Ethiopians also, ye [shall be] slain by my sword.
Ver. 12. Ye Ethiopians also, ye shall be slain by my sword] Which is long enough to reach you, though far remote. The poets feign that Jupiter was wont to be feasted by the Ethiopians; but that shall not save them from God's sore and great strong sword. Nebuchadnezzar, to whom God had given Ethiopia, and Egypt, and Saba as a ransom for his people, Isaiah 43:3. See Proverbs 11:8. See Trapp on " Pro 11:8 " The Ethiopians and Egyptians were subdued together, Jer 46:2 Isaiah 18:1,2. It is now inhabited by the Abyssinians (a kind of mongrel Christians), and called Prester John's country; where they say they have this custom, among others: In their great solemnities they have a cup of gold borne before them, filled within, and besmeared without with dirt, yet so as the gold appeareth; and next to this cup is carried a crucifix. Hereby they would show that man should be pure as gold; but being within and without defiled by sin, he is restored by Christ crucified, so as that the gold of God's graces appeareth in him here in part, and shall do hereafter in all perfection.