Albert Barnes Commentary Isaiah 30:4

"For their princes are at Zoan, and their ambassadors are come to Hanes." — Isaiah 30:4 (ASV)

For his princes - The meaning of this verse seems to be this: The prophet is stating the fact that the Jews would be ashamed of their attempted alliance with Egypt. In this verse and the following, he states how they would be made to realize their folly in seeking this alliance. He therefore enumerates several circumstances regarding how the alliance had been sought, and the disappointment that would follow after all their vain confidence.

He therefore states (Isaiah 30:4) that the Jews had employed persons of the highest respectability and honor, even princes, to secure the alliance; that they had gone to Egypt with much difficulty—through a land where lions, vipers, and fiery serpents abounded; that they had, at great risk, taken their treasures down to Egypt to secure the alliance (Isaiah 30:5–6); and that, after all, the Egyptians could not aid them.

The phrase ‘his princes,’ refers to the princes of Judah, the ambassadors whom the Jews sent out. The idea is that they regarded the alliance as so important that they had employed their most honorable men—even their princes—to secure it.

Were at Zoan - They had come to Zoan, or were there on the business of their embassy. On the situation of Zoan, see the notes on Isaiah 19:11 and Isaiah 19:13. It was the residence of the kings in Lower Egypt and would be the place to which the ambassadors would naturally go to negotiate an alliance.

Came to Hanes - Regarding the location of this place, there has been much diversity of opinion among interpreters. The Chaldee renders it with the fuller name “Tahpanhes”; Grotius supposes that the word is contracted from Tahpanhes (Jeremiah 43:7–8), and that the name was sometimes abbreviated and written חנס chânēs. Vitringa supposes that it was Anusis, situated in the Nile Delta, and the residence of the king of the same name. Herodotus (2.137) mentions a city of that name, Ἄνυσίς Anusis.

Anusis was a king of Egypt before the irruption of the Ethiopians, and it was not uncommon for a king to give his own name to a city. Probably Anusis is the city intended here; and the meaning is that they had come to the royal residence for the purpose of negotiating an alliance. It is known that in the time of Jeremiah (588 years before Christ), “Tahpanhes” was the capital of the nation .