“And I will pour my fury on Sin, the strength of Egypt; and I will cut off the multitude of No.
“And I will set fire in Egypt: Sin shall have great pain, and No shall be rent asunder, and Noph shall have distresses daily.
“The young men of Aven and Pi-beseth shall fall by the sword: and these cities shall go into captivity.
“At Tehaphnehes also the day shall be darkened, when I shall break there the yokes of Egypt: and the pomp of her strength shall cease in her: a cloud shall cover her, and her daughters shall go into captivity. Thus will I execute judgments in Egypt, (Mithraim, the same as Misraim, the son of Ham:) and they shall know that I am the Lord.” Ezek. xxx. 1–19.
And so Zeph. ii. 12: “Ye Ethiopians also, ye shall be slain by my sword.” We shall take occasion to notice this passage elsewhere. And Joel iii. 8: “And I will sell your sons and your daughters into the hand of the children of Judah, and they shall sell them to the Sabeans, to a people far off: for the Lord hath spoken it.” Zephaniah iii. 8–10 may be said to develop the ultimate providence of God touching this matter:
“Therefore, wait ye upon me, saith the Lord, until the day that I rise up to the prey: for my determination is to gather the nations, that I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even all my fierce anger: for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my jealousy.
“For then I will turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve him with one consent.
“From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia, my suppliants, even the daughter of my dispersed (Putsi, the daughters of Put; the word means dispersed, because they were scattered and lost as to name) shall bring mine offering.” They were evidently the most deteriorated of all the descendants of Ham.
When a people or nation give evidence that they are insensible to all rules of right, either divine or human, it necessarily follows that their hand will be found against every man, and every man’s hand against them. The subjugation of such a people, so regardless of all law, can only end in their being put to death, or, in the more merciful provision of the divine law, by reducing them to a state of absolute slavery.
The experience of mankind proves that such heathen, so reduced to a state of bondage, have always given evidence that their moral and even physical condition has been ameliorated by it, and in proportion to the scrupulous particularity by which they to whom they were enslaved successfully compelled and forced them to walk in the paths of rectitude.