The Cushite king will attempt to come to Judah's aid, and there's no doubt he provides a distraction when Sennacherib of Assyria has to pause his intended assault on Judah when he hears that the Cushite over Egypt, King Tirhakah, was marching out with his forces to fight against him. But it is the Lord who provides a miraculous deliverance for Jerusalem when Sennacherib returns with his army intending to lay siege to Jerusalem.
During the lifetime of the prophet Isaiah and of King Hezekiah, who will feature largely in the book of Isaiah, the 25th Dynasty of Egypt is ruled by Cushite pharaohs, not by Egyptian pharaohs. Egypt had subjugated the region of Cush long ago, a region which corresponds partly to Ethiopia today but which encompassed a much larger swath of territory, but Egypt went on the decline after the Bronze Age. There was much internal disintegration and unrest in Egypt, causing Cush to be able to rebel against being subject to Egypt and to be able to launch a successful invasion of Egypt, after which a long succession of Cushite kings sat on the throne. But by Isaiah's day the Assyrian Empire was out to conquer everything around it, including Egypt, Judah, Israel, and many others in the region.
It makes sense that Egypt would want to ally itself with Judah against Assyria; the king of Egypt's forces were not great enough to face the Assyrian army. It also makes sense that Judah would want to accept a proposed alliance from the Cushite king of Egypt, especially after the northern kingdom of Israel fell to Assyria's forces. But Judah is to be still and know that God is God, to quote from Psalm 46. Judah's deliverance is from the Lord, not from man.
The Lord will act on Judah's behalf at the right time and in the right way. With this in mind, we begin today's text. "All you people of the world, you who live on the earth, when a banner is raised on the mountains, you will see it, and when a trumpet sounds, you will hear it." (Isaiah 18:3) The Assyrians will march out with their flags held high and with the sound of their war trumpets but the people of Judah are not to panic. The Lord isn't in a panic! We find Him calm, cool, collected, and in control in this next segment.
Isaiah says of his message from the Lord: "This is what the Lord says to me: 'I will remain quiet and I will look on from My dwelling place, like shimmering heat in the sunshine, like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.'" (Isaiah 18:4) There is a sense of waiting stillness in this verse, like the humid and insect-buzzing stillness of a hot day in late summer. It may appear as if nothing is happening, but the Lord is poised to strike the enemy at just the right moment.
"For, before the harvest, when the blossom is gone and the flower becomes a ripening grape, He will cut off the shoots with pruning knives, and cut down and take away the spreading branches. They will all be left to the mountain birds of prey and to the wild animals; the birds will feed on them all summer, the wild animals all winter." (Isaiah 18:5-6) When the enemy is literally at the gates of Jerusalem, and when it appears all hope is lost and there is no escape, the Lord will come through for the kingdom of Judah in such a way that no one can claim that anyone but the Lord wrought deliverance. In 2 Kings 19 we find Him striking down 185,000 Assyrian soldiers encamped outside Jerusalem. The people of Jerusalem didn't have to lift a finger against the enemy; when they arose the next morning all these Assyrian soldiers were lying dead in the fields, which fulfills the prophecy from our verses above which says, "They will all be left to the mountain birds of prey and to the wild animals". The thousands of dead bodies of the Assyrian soldiers are what the birds and animals of prey will feed on.
What happens next? "Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there. One day, while he was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisrok, his sons Adrammelek and Sharezer killed him with the sword." (2 Kings 19:36-37a) The nation of Judah outlasted the nation of Israel by approximately 130 years and was never conquered by Assyria. If the spiritual revival which occurred during the reign of King Hezekiah had persisted, Judah never would have fallen, but nevertheless we see the Lord's divine deliverance from the most fearsome nation in the world in that era. The people of Judah did not need the help of Cush/Egypt or anyone else. All they needed was the Lord, who set the stage for Jerusalem's deliverance in such a way that no one could claim Jerusalem was saved by anyone except Him, which led to the people's increased faith in the Lord.
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