For I am the Lord your God,
    the Holy One of Israel, your Saviour;
I give Egypt for your ransom,
    Cush and Seba in your stead.
4 Since you are precious and honoured in my sight,
    and because I love you,
I will give people in exchange for you,
    nations in exchange for your life.

‘He would still, when there was occasion, make all the interests of the children of men give way to the interests of his own children’ Matthew Henry.

Derek Kidner, in the ‘New Bible Commentary’, makes the point that great nations have fallen and will fall to make way for Israel, and that ‘her ultimate ransom must be a very different victim (cf.53:5-6).’ p.658.

As Matthew Henry asks: ‘What are Ethiopia and Seba, all their lives and treasures, compared with the blood of Christ?’

What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? (Ro.8:31).