Isaiah 27:12

The Lord shall beat off... — The English Version conveys scarcely any meaning. The verb used is that which we find in Isaiah 28:27 for the “beating out” of seeds from their husks, as a form of threshing. In Deuteronomy 24:20 it is used of the beating down of the olive crop. So understood, the words imply a promise, like that of Isaiah 17:6, but on a far wider scale. Instead of the gleaning of a few olives from the topmost boughs, there should be a full and abundant gathering, and yet each single olive, “one by one” should receive an undivided care. Judah and Israel should once more be peopled as in the days of old, and the ideal boundaries or their territory should be restored.

The channel, or flood of the river, is the Euphrates.

The stream of Egypt. — As in Genesis 15:18; 1 Kings 8:65, not the Nile, but the river which divides Palestine from Egypt, known by the Greeks as Rhinocolura, and now the Wady-el-’Arish.