Isaiah 19:1 - Meaning and Application

Though Egypt had once been a house of bondage for God’s people, the unbelieving Jews still longed for it. They kept acting like their ancestors, who said, “Let us choose a leader and go back to Egypt.” On every occasion they looked to Egypt for help (Isaiah 30:2), and when their own land was in ruin, they fled there in open disobedience to God’s command (Jeremiah 43:7). Rabshakeh also taunted Hezekiah with this same weakness (Isaiah 36:6).

As long as Judah leaned on Egypt, and Egypt seemed strong, the people did not fear God’s judgments. They felt safe because they thought Egypt would protect them. They also failed to trust God when trouble came. To cure this harmful confidence, God would humble Egypt in many ways.

First, Egypt’s gods would prove what they had always been, helpless to save. “The Lord rides on a swift cloud and comes into Egypt.” As a judge comes to the court to condemn criminals, or a commander takes the field to crush rebels, so God would come in judgment against Egypt. When he comes, he always wins. In this warning there is no foreign army from another land. God himself will strike Egypt, and the causes of its ruin will rise from within.

He comes on a cloud, beyond any human resistance. He comes swiftly, because when the time of judgment arrives, it does not lag. He rides on the wings of the wind, with a majesty far greater than the splendor of earthly rulers. He makes the clouds his chariot (Psalm 18:9; Psalm 104:3). When he comes, Egypt’s idols will tremble and be removed from their place, as Dagon fell before the ark. Isis, Osiris, and Apis, famous Egyptian idols, will be found unable to help their worshipers, and people will reject them.

Idolatry had taken deeper root in Egypt than in almost any other land, including the most foolish kinds of idol worship. Yet even there, the idols would be shaken, and the people would be ashamed of them. When the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt, he had already judged the gods of Egypt (Numbers 33:4). So it is no surprise that the Egyptians would tremble when he came again. When they are desperate, they will seek their idols and consult charmers and wizards (Isaiah 19:3), but it will do no good. Their ruin will still rush toward them.

Second, Egypt’s army, once famous for courage, would lose heart completely. No kingdom had ever been better organized to keep a standing army, but now their brave men would be counted as cowards. “The heart of Egypt will melt within it,” like wax before fire (Isaiah 19:1). “The spirit of Egypt will fail” (Isaiah 19:3). They would have no strength or resolve to defend their land, freedom, or property, but would give everything up to the invader.

The Egyptians would be like women in fear (Isaiah 19:16). They would panic at the slightest alarm. Even those living in the center of the country, far from the borders and danger, would be just as terrified as those nearest the attack. So no one should be proud or secure because of boldness or military strength. God can easily cut off the courage of princes (Psalm 76:12) and take away their understanding (Job 12:24).

Third, Egypt would be torn apart by endless quarrels. God would not need to send a foreign army to destroy it, because the Egyptians would destroy one another (Isaiah 19:2). “I will stir up Egyptians against Egyptians.” These divisions are their sin, but God is not the maker of sin. They come from human lusts. Yet as a judge, God allows these divisions as punishment, and he uses these destructive disagreements to correct them for their sinful unity in evil.

Instead of helping one another and working together for the common good, they would fight against brother, neighbor, city, and kingdom. Egypt was divided into twelve provinces, or dynasties. Psammetichus, a ruler of one province, used these rivalries and eventually made himself master over them all. A kingdom divided against itself would soon collapse. What misery comes to a people when they cannot agree with one another. A perverse spirit, a spirit of contradiction, would also be mixed into them, like an intoxicating drink made from several ingredients (Isaiah 19:14). Then one party would support a thing only because the other party opposed it. Such a spirit in public affairs leads straight to ruin.

Fourth, Egypt’s political wisdom would fail completely and turn to foolishness. When God means to destroy a nation, he destroys its counsel too (Isaiah 19:3). He does this by taking wisdom away from leaders (Job 12:20), by setting them against each other, or by frustrating their plans even when they seem well made. Then the princes of Zoan are fools. They make fools of one another, each one exposing his own lack of sense, and God’s providence makes fools of them all (Isaiah 19:11).

Pharaoh had wise advisers, and Egypt was known for them. But now their advice had become senseless. They had lost all foresight. It was as if they had become stupid and were missing even common sense. So no one should boast in his own wisdom, or depend on it, or on the wisdom of people around him. God gives understanding, and he can take it away whenever he wills.

This is especially true of those most likely to lose it, the ones who boast about their policy and use their cleverness to win public trust. One may claim, “I am the son of the wise, the son of wisdom itself,” while another may boast, “I am the son of ancient kings.” Egyptian nobles prided themselves on their old family lines, even pretending to records that traced their rulers back more than 10,000 years. Herodotus reports that this kind of boasting was common, and Egyptians claimed their nation was thousands of years older than any other. But the question still stands: “Where are your wise men?” (Isaiah 19:12). Let them now show their wisdom by foreseeing the ruin coming on their nation, and stopping it if they can.

Let them with all their skill learn what the Lord of hosts has planned against Egypt, and prepare themselves for it. But they do the very opposite. They are, in effect, plotting Egypt’s ruin and speeding it along (Isaiah 19:13). The princes of Noph, that is, the rulers of Memphis, Egypt’s leading city, are not only deceived themselves, but they have led Egypt astray by pushing their kings toward arbitrary rule. By those policies, both rulers and people were soon ruined. The governors of Egypt, who should have been the supports and cornerstones of the nation, were instead weakening it.

It is a sad thing when the people meant to protect a nation help destroy it. The doctors of the state become its worst sickness. When the things needed for public peace are hidden from those trusted with public counsel, they make mistakes at every turn. So it was here, as verse 14 says, they caused Egypt to go wrong in every work it did. Every step was a false step. They kept missing either the goal or the means, and their plans were unstable and uncertain, like a drunk man staggering and slurring his words. This is a good reason to pray for counselors and ministers of state, who are great supports and blessings when God gives them wisdom, but the opposite when he hides understanding from them.

The rod of government would be turned into the serpent of tyranny and oppression (Isaiah 19:4). The Egyptians would be handed over to a cruel lord, not a foreign conqueror, but one of their own, one who would rule by hereditary right and still be a fierce king, governing with harshness. This may refer to the twelve tyrants who followed Sethon, or more likely to Psammetichus, who restored the monarchy. In any case, the prophecy speaks of one cruel ruler. The brutal treatment the Egyptian slave masters once gave God’s Israel was remembered against them, and they were paid back in kind by another Pharaoh. It is a sad thing when those meant to build up a people are used to tear them down, and when they are ruined by the very hands that should govern them. That is the kind of king described in 1 Samuel 8:11, spoken of there to strike fear.

Egypt was famous for the Nile, which was its wealth, strength, and beauty, and was even treated like a god. Now the prophecy says the waters will fail from the sea, and the river will dry up and waste away (Isaiah 19:5). Nature itself will no longer favor them as it once did. Egypt was not watered by regular rain from heaven (Zechariah 14:18), so its fruitfulness depended entirely on the overflow of the Nile. If that river dries up, the fertile land will become barren, and the harvest will stop. Everything planted by the streams will wither and vanish (Isaiah 19:7). If the reeds by the water’s edge dry up, the grain farther away will dry up all the more, since it depends on that same moisture.

But that is not all. The drying up of the rivers will also destroy their defenses, because the streams were like natural walls (Isaiah 19:6). They made the land hard for enemies to reach. Deep rivers are some of the strongest defenses, and hardest to cross. Pharaoh was compared to a great dragon lying among his rivers, protected by them and defying all around him (Ezekiel 29:3). Yet these waters would be emptied and dried up, not by an enemy like Sennacherib, who dried up mighty rivers with the sole of his foot (Isaiah 37:25), or like Cyrus, who took Babylon by dividing Euphrates into many channels, but by God’s providence, which can turn water springs into dry ground (Psalm 107:33).

The drying up of the rivers would also destroy the fish, which were a major part of Egypt’s food supply. That was the kind of thing the Israelites longed for in the wilderness when they said, “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt freely” (Numbers 11:5). When the rivers dry up, the fish die (Psalm 105:29), and that ruins the people whose work is fishing, whether by line or by nets (Isaiah 19:8). They will grieve and grow weak, because their trade is gone. Nothing affects worldly people more deeply than losing the money they used to make. Truly, the tears shed over lost money are real tears.

It would also ruin those who kept fish ready for sale. Some made ponds and channels for fish, but these would fail in their purpose (Isaiah 19:10). Their business would collapse, either because they had no water to fill the ponds or no fish to stock them. God can strip a nation even of the thing it depends on most. The Egyptians might remember the fish they once ate freely, but now they could not get it even with money. What makes the loss worse is that this ruin is partly their own doing (Isaiah 19:6). They would turn the rivers far away. Their kings and great men, to suit their own tastes, would draw water from the main river to their own houses and lands at a distance. They would put private comfort above the public good, and little by little weaken the river’s power.

This is how many people hurt themselves more than they realize. Some think they are wiser than nature and can do better for themselves than the order God has given. Others care more about their own interest than the good of the whole. Such people may please themselves for a time, but they can never truly be at peace when they help cause a public disaster that will also reach them in the end. Herodotus says that Pharaoh-Necho, who ruled not long after this, tried to cut a waterway from the Nile to the Red Sea. He used a huge number of workers to dig the channel, but in the attempt he weakened the river, lost 120,000 people, and still did not finish the work.

Egypt was also known for making linen, but that trade would be ruined. Solomon’s merchants traded with Egypt for linen yarn (1 Kings 10:28). The land produced excellent flax and had excellent workers, but those who work with fine flax would be ashamed and frustrated (Isaiah 19:9), either because they would have no flax to work with, or no buyers for what they had made, or no way to export it. When trade declines, it weakens a nation and slowly brings it down.

Egypt’s trade had to fail, because there would be no work for Egypt to do (Isaiah 19:15). Where there is nothing to do, there is nothing to gain. Business would come to a complete stop. There would be no work for either head or tail, branch or rush, no task for high or low, weak or strong, and no wages (Zechariah 8:10).

Note that the strength of a kingdom depends greatly on the hard work of its people. Things are likely to go well when everyone is at work, when the highest and lowest alike are willing to labor. But when the learned professions are idle, the main merchants have no capital, and the tradesmen have nothing to do, poverty comes on a people like a traveler and like an armed man.

A general alarm will then seize the Egyptians, and they will be afraid and full of fear (Isaiah 19:16). This fear will both show their public decay and help bring on their ruin. Two things will throw them into this panic.

First, what they hear from the land of Judah will terrify Egypt (Isaiah 19:17). When they hear of the destruction Sennacherib’s army brought on Judah, they will think, because Judah is so near and because Egypt is tied to Judah by alliance, that their own turn is next. When their neighbor’s house is on fire, they cannot help seeing their own danger. So every Egyptian who speaks of Judah will be afraid for himself, expecting the bitter cup to soon be put into his hand.

Second, what they see in their own land will frighten them. They will fear (Isaiah 19:16) because of the shaking of the hand of the Lord of hosts, and (Isaiah 19:17) because of the counsel of the Lord of hosts. From this they will conclude that God has decided against Egypt as well as Judah. If judgment begins at the house of God, where will it end? If this is done to the green tree, what will be done to the dry?

We see here how easily God can make people fear for themselves, even when they have been secure and have made others fear. He only has to shake his hand over them, or strike some of their neighbors, and the boldest hearts tremble at once. We also see how right it is for us to fear before God when he only shakes his hand over us, and to humble ourselves under his mighty hand when he only threatens us, especially when we see that his purpose is fixed against us. For who can change his counsel?