Charles Ellicott Commentary Isaiah 19

The burden of Egypt. —In its political aspects, as Egypt and Ethiopia were at this time under the same ruler, Tirhakah, as they had been before under Piankhi-Mer-Amon, this prophecy presents nearly the same features as the preceding. Its chief characteristic is that it presents the condition of the conquered nation as distinct from that of the conqueror. The opening words declare that the long-delayed judgment is at last coming, swift as a cloud driven by the storm-wind, upon the idols of Egypt. People will feel that the presence of the Mighty One is among them.

I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians ... —The discord predicted was probably the natural consequence of the overthrow of the Ethiopian power by Sargon, the Assyrian king, in 720 BC. Under Piankhi each nome, or district, had been governed by a chief, acknowledging the suzerainty of the Ethiopian king, and these, when the restraint was removed, would naturally assert their independence. So Herodotus (2.147) relates that on the overthrow of Sabaco, the last of the Ethiopian dynasty, the unity of Egypt was broken up into a dodecarchy.

The charmers, and to those who have familiar spirits ... —The old reputation of Egypt for magic arts (Exodus 7:22; Exodus 8:7) seems to have continued. The “charmers” or mutterers were probably distinguished by some peculiar form of ventriloquism, like those that peep in Isaiah 8:19. A time of panic, when the counsel of ordinary statesmen failed, was sure there, as at Athens in its times of peril, to be fruitful in oracles and divinations.

Into the hand of a cruel lord. —The later history of Egypt presents so many examples of oppressive government that it is difficult to say to which of them the picture drawn here most resembles. Sargon, or Esarhaddon, or Psammetichus, who became king of Egypt on the breaking up of the dodecarchy, or Nebuchadnezzar, or Cambyses, has, each in his turn, been identified as presenting the features of the “cruel lord.”

The waters shall fail from the sea. —The “sea”, like the river, is, of course, the Nile (Homer calls it Oceanus), or, possibly, indicates specifically the Pelusiac branch of the river. So the White and Blue Niles are respectively the White and Blue Seas (Bahr). The words that follow seem to describe partly the result of the failure of the annual rising of the Nile, partly of the neglect of the irrigation systems caused by the anarchy implied in Isaiah 19:2 (Herod. ii. 137).