Isaiah 19:6, commentary and pictures

Isaiah 19:6 is part of the burden of Egypt, a prophecy concerning Egypt and of God's judgments upon that nation, already fulfilled in Egypt in great part. It stands in the sequence of judgments upon various nations that leads to a vision of judgment upon the whole earth. It predicts the turning away, emptying and drying up of Egypt's rivers and defensive brooks and the withering of reeds and flags as part of Egypt's invasion, conquest, spoiling, perpetual fall into the hands of strangers, becoming the basest of kingdoms, and renouncing idolatry. It means Egypt would lose its watery defense, though it was the most defensible country in the world, bounded by the Red Sea and trackless desert, able to defend the mouths of its river with a powerful navy and to drown an invading army by the inundation of the Nile.

The drying of its rivers, canals, reeds and flags means its destruction as a habitable land, because the whole land depends on the inundation of the Nile for irrigation and harvest. A sufficient rise waters all the fields and brings a rich harvest, a shortfall brings want and famine, and an excessive rise also brings famine, so the emptying and drying denounced in the verse is ruin to the same extent it occurs. The same ruin is illustrated by the channel gradually filling up and many ancient outlets of the Delta being dry in summer and almost obliterated. The withering of the reeds is the literal disappearance of papyrus, which once grew abundantly along Egypt's waterways and was later unknown there. The prophecy has already been fulfilled in great part through Egypt's successive subjugation by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, the Persians under Cambyses, and the Macedonians under Alexander the Great, followed by the Ptolemies, Romans, Saracens, Mamelukes, and Turks. The drying was fulfilled literally, with travelers crossing forty dry watercourses in one day's travel in the Delta, and water-skins now needed around ruined cities whose walls were once blockaded by Greek and Roman navies.

The prophecy concerning Egypt refers to the preaching of the Gospel in both Egypt and Assyria in New Testament times. The verse describes the day of the Lord at the time of the vials of wrath, when the rivers are turned far away and the brooks of defence are emptied and dried up and the reeds and flags wither, as part of the failing and wasting and drying of the waters that withers everything sown by the brooks, makes fishers mourn and languish, and confounds workers in flax and woven goods.