Isaiah 11:11

The Lord shall set his hand again the second time... — The “first” time, implied in the “second,” was obviously that of the Exodus. Then, as from a state of extremest misery, they had entered on their life as a nation, and what had been in the past should be reproduced yet more wonderfully in the future. The list of countries that follows rests in part on the fact of a dispersion already begun, as in 2 Kings 15:29; 2 Kings 17:6, and Isaiah 43:5, partly on the prophet’s prevision of the coming years. The great kingdoms by which Judah was surrounded are all enumerated: — (1) Assyria; (2) Egypt, i.e., Lower Egypt; (3) Pathros, probably the region of Upper Egypt, of which Thebes was the capital (the name has been interpreted as “Southland,” or as connected with the worship of the goddess Athor); (4) Cush, i.e., Ethiopia, higher up the valley of the Nile, governed at this time by a warlike and powerful dynasty (see Isaiah 37:9); (5) Elam, often translated Persia, but probably used, with a wider range, for the region east of the lower course of the Tigris and Euphrates; (6) Shinar, as in Genesis 11:1, the plain south of the junction of those rivers; (7) Hamath, the nearest of the hostile kingdoms (see Note on Isaiah 10:9); and, lastly, the “island” or coast regions of the Mediterranean Sea. In Zephaniah 3:10 we have traces of an Ethiopian captivity; in Ezra 2:7, of exiles in Elam.