Isaiah chapter 19

CHAPTER XIX. 

THE BURDEN OF EGYPT. 

THE Burden of Egypt " is one of the series of " burdens " or " oracles concerning " various places and countries that occupy this part of Isaiah's prophecies. Thus, in ch. xiiL-xiv., we have " the burden of Babylon " ; that is, utter extinction for ever. And in ch. xv.-xvi., " the burden of Moab " ; that is, overthrow and captivity, but not utter extinction. A latter-day mission belongs to Moab in connection with Yahweh's outcasts, and final subjugation to Israel when the throne of David is established in mercy by Christ. So in ch. xvii. " the burden of Damascus" is introduced, and, at the end of the chapter, the burden of many peoples rushing like mighty waters ; while in ch. xviii., the " land shadowing with wings " is described in its latter-day character and mission. And now, in ch. xix., the prophet by the spirit reveals various matters concerning Egypt's smitings and healings at the hand of God from that day to the day of Christ, so often and so darkly alluded to in the Scriptures. By the help of the other Scriptures and of history, we make an endeavour to grasp the most salient points oi the prophecy. ' 'Behold the Lord rideth upon a swift cloud, and shall come into Egypt : and the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence, and the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst of it." The manifestation of God in Egypt had been literally connected with cloud and darkness, ages before Isaiah's time. The pillar of cloud that indicated His presence in Israel and directed the movements of His camps, was a matter of notoriety in Israel's history, as also was the terrible manifestation on Mount Sinai. But the language here has to do with a future vindication of God and of Israel in the land of the old-time bondage. AVith the nature of that vindication we are acquainted from the Scriptures, which tell us that it is to be wrought by the manifested presence of Israel's God in Jesus and the saints, with the tribes of Israel under them, as Israel of old was under the direction of Moses and the elders of Israel. This divine manifestation is frequently spoken of in the Scriptures under the beautiful figure of the clouds as God's chariot of war and victory. Thus it is said in the Psalms (xviii. 10-11): "He rode upon a cherub and did fly, yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his secret place, his pavilion round about him were dark waters and thick clouds of the skies." And again (Psalm civ. 3): " Who maketh the clouds his chariots, who walketh upon the wings of the wind (or spirit, ruach). Who maketh his angels spirits, his ministers a flaming fire." Daniel, in vision, saw "one like the Son of Man" come with the clouds of heaven to the Ancient of Days to receive the everlasting kingdom (Dan. vii. 13). Afterwards, when the Son of Man was revealed, he said that after the subversion of the Jewish state by the Romans, there should " appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven." " And then," said he, " shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory." Thus clouds symbolically stand in some connections for the angels who are higher than men, and in others for men raised to angelic nature. For the saints are to be made "equal to the angels"; and the apostles speak of them also under the figure of clouds. Thus Paul speaks to the Thessalonians saying: " We which are alive and remain (unto the coming of the Lord) shall be caught away together with them (the risen dead) in clouds, to meet the Lord in the air " (1 Thess. iv. 17). And in Heb. xii. he speaks of the faithful dead as " so great a cloud of witnesses." In the Revelation (ch. i. 7) John says: " Behold he cometh with clouds ; and every eye shall see him." And in chapter xiv. one like the Son of Man is seen sitting on a white cloud, crowned with gold, and armed with a sharp sickle with which he reaps the harvest of the earth in the outpouring of the wrath of God.'' These figures prepare us for the conclusion that the language of Isa. xix. proclaims, a future manifestation in the land of Egypt exceeding the wonders of the Exodus under Moses. In the days of Moses the idols of Egypt were moved at God's presence, for the angel of His presence wrought with Moses, and " against the gods of Egypt he executed judgment," and their priests and magicians could not stand before Moses. But since Isaiah's day, some 700 years before Christ, we do not find in history a trace of any such divine phenomenon. Nevertheless it is decreed for Egypt, as it is also for the land of Israel, that it shall shake at His presence when He is magnified and sanctified and made known in the eyes of many nations (Ezek. xxxviii.). As concerning judgments on Egypt more proximate to Isaiah's day, they were, of course, executed under the supervision of the angels of God's power, but it is certain that nothing in the past, in its fulfilment, exhausts the language of this opening verse. Strife and civil war were denounced upon Egypt in verses 2 and 3. " And," it continues, " the Egyptians will I give over into the hand of a cruel Lord ; and a fierce king shall rule over them, saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts." The first subjection of Egypt, dating from Isaiah's time, was to Assyria. Sennacherib warred with Tirhakah (the Ethiopian king who conquered Egypt) at Libnah (2 Kings xviii.-xix.), and probably would have overcome Egypt had not God destroyed his army of 185,000 men in a single night, as the Scripture tells us He did. After his death his son, Esarhaddon, invaded and subdued Egypt, and, although Tirhakah successfully rebelled, he was afterwards re-conquered by Esarhaddon's son, Assur-bani-pal. This was about B.C. 666. In this was fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah (ch. xx.) in the days of Sargon, Sennacherib's predecessor. Isaiah was made to walk naked and barefoot for three years, for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia. For "so," said God, "shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners and the Ethiopians captives, young and old naked and barefoot, even with their bufetocks uncovered to the shame of Egypt. And they shall be afraid and ashamed of Ethiopia, their expectation, and of Egypt, their glory. And the inhabitants of this country shall say in that day, Behold such is our expectation, whither we flee for help to be delivered from the king of Assyria, and how shall we escape ? " But after a while the Assyrian power declined, and the Babylonian arose; and the " cruel lord" and "fierce king," of whose dominion over Egypt the Scriptures next and chiefly speak, is Nebuchadnezzar, God's " servant," into whose hand He gave so many nations, including Israel. Jeremiah tells us how, after Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of Jerusalem, the remnant of the Jews would flee into Egypt, notwithstanding the fact that God had forbidden it when they enquired His will through Jeremiah. Jeremiah himself was carried down into Egypt by Johanan ; and, at Tahpanhes, by the word of God, he took great stones and laid them with mortar in the pavement that was before Pharaoh's house, and proclaimed that Nebuchadnezzar should come and set his throne upon them, and smite and spoil Egypt, in which the remnant of the Jews had put their confidence to the disobeying of Jehovah's word. Ezekiel, likewise, foretells the same things, mentioning the same place, Tahpanhes (xxx. 18), and divinely appointing the land of Egypt as wages for Nebuchadnezzar for his service against Tyre on God's behalf (ch. xxix.). Nebuchadnezzar had first to do with Egypt in connection with Pharaoh Necho's invasion of the East. Jeremiah (xlvi.) denounces the word of the Lord " against Egypt, against the army of Pharaoh Necho, King of Egypt, which was by the river Euphrates, in Carchemish, which Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, smote in the fourth year of the reign of Jehohiakim, son of Josiah, King of Judah." The language of Jeremiah concerning the invading hosts of Egypt, conversely illustrates that of Isaiah concerning Egypt's ruin. Jeremiah says : " Who is this that cometh up as a flood, whose waters are moved as the rivers ? Egypt riseth up like a flood, and his waters are moved like the rivers; and he saith, I will go up and will cover the earth : I will destroy the city and the inhabitants thereof " (verse 8). Egypt, like Assyria, was symbolised by its river, and with peculiar fitness, for the Nile is the making of Egypt, without which it would be like the surrounding desert. And, therefore, the drying of the Nile is as fit a symbol of the wasting of Egypt's power, as the drying of the Euphrates (Rev. xvi.) is of the modern wasting of the power of the Turk. But the figurative does not necessarily exclude a certain amount of the literal. In the siege of Babylon the Euphrates was actually dried, by Cyrus diverting the channel and entering the city by the river bed. And the wasting of the power of Egypt at this time comprehended an incident which may be covered by Isaiah's language in ch. xix. Pharaoh Necho attempted to anticipate the Suez Canal, or rather he essayed to cut a canal from the Red Sea to the Nile, and so to connect the Red Sea with the Mediterranean. The distance was nearly double the Suez route, and, " after 120,000 workmen had lost their lives in the attempt, Necho was obliged to desist; the oracle which had been consulted by him having answered, that this new canal would open a passage to the Barbarians to invade Egypt." He did better with his Phoenician navy, which circumnavigated Africa, leaving the Red Sea and returning through the straits of Gibraltar. Necho, as the Scriptures tell us, reluctantly fought with Josiah, king of Judah, who was slain in battle and mourned greatly by Judah. Necho also carried away Jehoahaz, his son, captive to Egypt, and placed Eliakim on the throne in Jerusalem and under tribute, changing his name to Jehoiakim. It was in his days that Nebuchadnezzar subdued Egypt, according to Jeremiah's prophecy. The brief account of Jehoiakim's reign in 2 Kings xxiv. 7, tells us that " the king of Egypt came not again any more out of his land: for the king of Babylon had taken from the river of Egypt, unto the river Euphrates, all that pertained to the king of Egypt." Necho was succeeded by Psametik, who reigned but a short time, and was followed by Pharaoh Hophra, whose name, with those of Tirhakah and Necho, and others before and after, has been discovered in the Egyptian inscriptions. He was confederate with Palestine and Phoenicia against Babylon, and aided Tyre for a number of years against the Babylonian besiegers; but at length it fell, and Nebuchadnezzar was avenged by conquest of Egypt, which, in the divine operations, he thus received for " wages" (Ezek. xxix. 17-21). The desolation consequent upon his conquest of Pharaoh Hophra is that which Ezekiel foretells for Egypt as to be of forty years' duration, and to be succeeded only by a permanent subjugation of Egypt to other Powers (Ezek. xxix.). And so it came to pass, for the Persians not only conquered Babylon, but subdued Egypt as well, which has never since risen to the rank of an overshadowing Power with a great Empire as in the ancient days. After the Persians, Egypt came under the sway of the Greeks, of which the city Alexandria, named after Alexander the Great,, is a standing witness to this day. Then came the rule of the Ptolemies, spoken of in the prophecy of Daniel xi., and afterwards,, on the death of Cleopatra in B.C. 30, Egypt became a Roman province. After about 600 years it came under the Moslem rule,, and has continued under it almost to the present time. The last hundred years have seen a change in the country, which is but the precursor of the greater changes foretold by Isaiah. The revolt of Mehemet Ali against the Sultan, and his victories in 1832, and the constitution of Egypt, at the intervention of the Powers, as a hereditary pachalic in his line, paved the way for the resuscitation of Egypt in the latter days. The subsequent revolt of Arabi Pacha and British intervention are as matters of yesterday ; and now Egypt prospers greatly under those who are now "the stay of the tribes thereof." But we know that there is a yet further giving over into the hand of a " cruel lord," and "fierce king," before the country, for the King of the North is, " in the time of the end," to " stretch forth his hand also upon the countries, and the land of Egypt shall not escape. But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt " (Dan. xi. 42). The context of Daniel's prophecy in this place introduces upon the scene the same power as that spoken of by Isaiah in chap. xix. The King of the North comes to his end before " Michael the great Prince." And Isaiah says that the Egyptian oppressor of the latter-days shall fall before the " Saviour," the " great one" whom God will at that time raise up to Israel (v. 20). " In that day," says Isaiah (v. 16), " shall Egypt be like unto women, and it shall be afraid and fear because of the shaking of the hand of the Lord of hosts, which he shaketh over it. And the land of Judah shall he a terror unto Egypt, every one that maketh mention thereof shall be afraid in himself, because of the counsel of the Lord of hosts, which he hath determined against it." Never from Isaiah's day to this has there been anything like this in Egypt. In all the past, Egypt has been more or less a terror to the land of Judah ; and will yet be so again before the end. The Jews are more or less in terror perpetually in the Russian territory of the future Lord of Egypt, and when he obtains possession of the country by conquest, they will be in terror under his rule there. There are only a few thousand Jews in Egypt now, but there will be very many thousands before the second exodus takes place; and " the south" will be disposed to " keep back" Jehovah's outcast people, as was Pharaoh in the days of Moses. And so God says by Isaiah (xliii. 6) " I will say to the North, Give up ; and to the South, Keep not back : bring my sons from far, and my daughters from the end of the earth." When the time comes for this, Egypt will be made to fear Israel's God as it was under Moses. " According to the days of thy coming out of the land of Egypt, will I show unto him marvellous things " (Mic. vii. 15). The history of the Exodus will be repeated on a grander scale under the prophet like unto Moses, as Isaiah (xi.) and the other prophets testify. " In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the language of Canaan, and swear to the Lord of hosts; one shall be called the city of destruction" (v. 18). In Isaiah's time, and before and afterwards, Egypt spoke her own language and swore to the gods of the country, as to Ra, Osiris, Isis, Apis, and the others. Even the shaking that God gave the country by Moses did not eradicate this. But in the future it will be different ; for of the coming day of judgment God says by Zephaniah (iii. 9): " For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord to serve him with one consent. From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia (Cash), my suppliants, even the daughter of my dispersed shall bring mine offering." And again, Zechariah says (ch. viii. 22): " Many people and strong nations shall come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the Lord. Thus saith the Lord of hosts; in those days it shall come to pass that ten men shall take hold out of all the languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you." Thus it will be in Egypt and other countries as it was in the Persian Empire in the days of Ahasuerus and Mordecai, when, after the vindication of the Jews and the fall and death of Haman, their arch enemy, " many of the people of the land became Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell upon them " (Esther viii. 17). And Egypt will be kept up to standard in the " worship of the king, the Lord of hosts " ; for, "if the family of Egypt go not up and come not . . . there shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will smite the heathen that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles. This shall be the punishment of Egypt, and the punishment of all nations that come not up to keep the feast of tabernacles" (Zech. xiv. 18). There seems to be some little uncertainty about the name of the city mentioned—" the city of destruction." The Hebrew has it " Heres " ; but the Septuagint has it Asedec, as corresponding to the Heb. Zedek, righteousness; while the margin gives an alternative—" or, of the sun." The sun was worshipped in Egypt in the service of the hawk-headed god Ra, and the darkness over all the land in one of the plagues showed its futility and the power of Israel's God, by whose wonderful provision the children of Israel simultaneously had light in their dwellings. Perhaps the name of the city is a memorial of some such stroke of judgment as this. In any case, the appropriateness will be seen when the event transpires. "In that day there shall be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the Lord, and it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt : for they shall cry unto the Lord because of the oppressors, and he shall send them a Saviour and a Great One, and he shall deliver them." Of late years the most fantastic interpretations have arisen concerning this passage in connection with the Anglo-Israelitish theories concerning the Great Pyramid, which they profess to regard as the altar and pillar in question. Very little consideration is necessary to dispose of this ; for neither in points of time nor circumstance does the Great Pyramid correspond with the prophecy. The thing Isaiah speaks of is an erection of the future, whereas the Great Pyramid was of hoary antiquity even in Isaiah's day, dating back to perhaps B.C. 3000. (The " authorities " differ by a millennium or more just here, Marriette making the fourth dynasty, to which Cheops the builder belonged, date Β c. 4235, while Lepsius puts it B.C. 3124.—Ency. Brit.). And the Great Pyramid was most certainly not an altar to Yahweh, whose very name was not revealed in Egypt till about B.C. 1500 (Ex. iii. 15). The purpose of the " sign " and the occasion of its erection, us revealed in v. 20, is so obvious as to render the " Great Pyramid theory," as it is called, unworthy of serious following. There is an episode in Israel's history which sheds great li^ht upon the prophecy in this place, and with which the language naturally invites comparison. It is the account in Josh, xxii., of how the Reubenites and the Gadites and the halftribe of Manasseh, returning to their possessions on the east side of Jordan after their service in war together with the other tribes, " built there an altar by Jordan, a great altar to see to." The other tribes, hearing that the two-and-a-half tribes had " built an altar over against the land of Canaan, in the borders of Jordan, at the passage of the children of Israel" were angry, and prepared war against them, supposing that they had done it idolatrously. The explanation of the two-and-a-half tribes, however, appeased them perfectly. It was to the effect that the altar was simply a monument of witness to the fact that they belonged to Israel, though dwelling on the other side of Jordan. 

And so they "called the altar Ed, for it shall be a witness between us that the Lord is God." And so this " altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and pillar at the border thereof," will be monuments memoiialising the fact that the Lord has conquered and possessed Egypt, just as He did Canaan by Joshua and his people in the days of old. And Egypt will be united with Israel in the worship and service of Jehovah, just as really as the trans-Jordanic tribes of Joshua's day were with their brethren west of the river. The Saviour and Great One promised came out of Egypt in his infancy, and the sites related traditionally to his sojourn there are still in a manner venerated, though sadly so in the eyes of those who are enlightened concerning him. He is himself, in a sense, the Lord's " altar" (Heb. xiii. 10), and pillar of witness, to whom the everlasting pillars in the house of God (Rev. iii. 12), will be immortally related in the day of his coming. Current traditional theology has divorced from his· name all idea of a future salvation to be wrought by Him in the land of Egypt ; but God's ideas are not affected by human opinions, and the day will come of which Isaiah speaks, when,, like Moses of old, the Saviour " shall deliver them." Egypt will be again the scene of divine manifestation, all unexpected by " the modern Pharaoh." There will be another Moses, another controversy, more magicians exposed in various unexpected ways, and finally the country will be subjugated in blessedness* with Israel to God. " In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land ;. whom the Lord of hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance." Thus all nations at last, according to God'spromise, shall be blessed in Abraham and in his seed.