For I am the LORD thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Saviour: I gave Egypt for thy ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for thee.
I gave Egypt for thy ransom. Either Egypt or Israel must perish: God chose that Egypt, though so much more mighty, should be destroyed, in order that His people might be delivered; thus Egypt stood, instead of Israel, as a kind of "ransom." The Hebrew, koper (H3724), means properly, that with which anything is overlaid, as the pitch with which the ark was overlaid; hence, that which covers over sins, an atonement. Nebuchadnezzar had subdued Egypt, Ethiopia (Hebrew, Cush), and Saba (descended from Cush Genesis 10:7, probably Meroe of Ethiopia, a great island formed by the Astaboras and the Nile, conquered by Cambyses, successor of Cyrus). Cyrus received these from God, with the rest of the Babylonian dominions, in consideration of his being about to deliver Israel. However, the reference may be to the three years' war in which Sargon overcame these countries, and so had his attention diverted from Israel, (see notes, Isaiah 20:1-6) (Vitringa). But the sense is probably more general, including all the instances in which Yahweh sacrificed mighty pagan nations when the safety of Israel required it.