Are ye not as children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel? saith the LORD. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir?
Are ye not as children of the Ethiopians unto me, O children of Israel? saith the Lord - however great ye seem to yourselves. Do not rely on past privileges, and on my having delivered you from Egypt, as if therefore I never would remove you from Canaan. I make no more account of you than of "the Ethiopian" (cf. Jeremiah 13:23).
Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt? and the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir? "Have not I (who) brought you out of Egypt," done as much for other peoples? For instance, did I not bring "the Philistines (notes, Isaiah 14:29, etc.) from Caphtor" where they had been bond-servants, and the Syrians from Kir? (cf. Deuteronomy 2:23; note, Jeremiah 47:4.) Pusey thinks there were different migrations of the same tribe into Palestine, which afterward merged in one common name. The first must have been that of the "Casluhim, out of whom came Philistim" (Genesis 10:14): a second from the Captorim, a kindred people, both being descended from Mizraim (Caphtor answers to Cappadocia); a third was the Cherethim (the Cretans; Crete being an intermediate resting-place in their migrations). It is appropriate that as the Syrians migrated into Syria from Kir (cf. note, Isaiah 22:6, "Kir uncovered the shield"), so they should be carried back captive into the same land (note, Amos 1:5; 2 Kings 16:9), just as elsewhere Israel is threatened with a return to Egypt, whence they had been delivered. The "Ethiopians" - Hebrew, Cushites-were originally akin to the race that founder Babylon: the cuneiform inscriptions found in the mounds of Chaldea Proper being in the Babylonian tongue, the vocabulary of which is proved to be Cushite or Ethiopian, thereby confirm independently the Scripture statement which had been thought by rationalists a mistake of Moses, or the writer of Genesis (Genesis 10:6; Genesis 10:8; Genesis 10:10, "The sons of Ham, Cush (Ethiopia), and Mizraim (Egypt) ... and Cush begat Nimrod ... And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel ... out of that land he went out into Assyria," (margin).