Matthew Poole and continuators on Joel 3:8

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 afar off , for the LORD hath spoken it .

Give them up into the hands of the Iews, who thereby shall have opportunities of disposing of them as they see good, so you did with my people, so I will recompence you.

To the Iews, the posterity and kindred of those you sold.

Either as Factors for Nebuchadnezzar, or Alexander the Great and his Successors; or else as Merchants Trading on their own account, shall make this one part of their Trade to sell Graecians, Tyrians, &c. Now though we should not have any particular History that relates the transactions of these people in this kind; yet we may rest assured 'twas done since God said it should be done; nor can we expect, or is it necessary it should be, that the Iews should by a conquest of these people bring them Captives, and sell them; The Zidonians, Tyrians, and Philistins did not so against the Iews, but they bought particular persons out of the hands of Syrians and Assyrians, who took the Iews Captives; so when Tyre and Zidon and the Philistins shall be captivated by the Babylonish power, or by the Graecian, these shall sell their Captives either into the hands, or by the hands of the Iews.

Sabeans were a people in the parts of Arabia most remote from Tyre and Zidon, they were accounted the ends of the Earth; Mat. 12.42. and spread themselves along by the Sea-Coast on both sides of the Arabian Bay or Red Sea, and past over that Sea, and planted in Africa, and were part of that Country which now doth, or lately did belong to the Emperour of Abassia, who (as the King of Spain in both Indies) glorieth in being King of both Sabeas, and Successor to the Queen of Sheba; to one or both of these Sabeans did the Iewish mensellers dispose of those slaves.

This may be an elliptick speech thus to be filled up, and the Sabeans shall sell them, (i. e. whom they bought of the Iews) unto another Nation far off from the Sabeans; or else 'tis an additional description of this people and their Country.

Then 'twas done, whether we know when, or by whom, or how many were sold or no.