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Read the Bible

Easy-to-Read Version

Isaiah 19:5

The water in the Nile River will dry up and disappear.

Bible Study Resources

Concordances:

- Nave's Topical Bible - Egypt;   Nile;   War;   Torrey's Topical Textbook - Egypt;   Nile, the River;   Rivers;  

Dictionaries:

- American Tract Society Bible Dictionary - Nile;   Tirhakah;   Bridgeway Bible Dictionary - Nile;   Easton Bible Dictionary - Sea, the;   Fausset Bible Dictionary - Job;   Nile;   No;   Red Sea;   Sea;   Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible - Isaiah, Book of;   Minish;   People's Dictionary of the Bible - Egypt;   Red sea;   Sea;  

Encyclopedias:

- Condensed Biblical Cyclopedia - Kingdom of Judah;   International Standard Bible Encyclopedia - Sea;   The Jewish Encyclopedia - Egypt;  

Parallel Translations

Christian Standard Bible®
The water of the sea will dry up,and the river will be parched and dry.
Hebrew Names Version
The waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and become dry.
King James Version
And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and dried up.
English Standard Version
And the waters of the sea will be dried up, and the river will be dry and parched,
New American Standard Bible
The waters from the sea will dry up, And the river will be parched and dry.
New Century Version
The sea will become dry, and the water will disappear from the Nile River.
Amplified Bible
The waters from the sea will dry up, And the river will be parched and dry.
World English Bible
The waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and become dry.
Geneva Bible (1587)
Then the waters of the sea shall faile, and the riuers shall be dryed vp, and wasted.
Legacy Standard Bible
The waters from the sea will dry up,And the river will be parched and dry.
Berean Standard Bible
The waters of the Nile will dry up, and the riverbed will be parched and empty.
Contemporary English Version
The Nile River will dry up and become parched land.
Complete Jewish Bible
The water will ebb from the sea, the river will be drained dry.
Darby Translation
And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and dried up;
George Lamsa Translation
And they shall cut off the water from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and dried up.
Good News Translation
The water will be low in the Nile, and the river will gradually dry up.
Lexham English Bible
And the waters will be dried up from the sea, and the river will be parched and dry.
Literal Translation
And the waters shall dry up from the sea, and the river shall fail and dry up.
Miles Coverdale Bible (1535)
The water of the see shalbe drawe out, Nilus shal synke awaye, & be dronke vp.
American Standard Version
And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and become dry.
Bible in Basic English
And the waters of the sea will be cut off, and the river will become dry and waste:
JPS Old Testament (1917)
And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be drained dry,
King James Version (1611)
And the waters shall faile from the sea, and the riuer shalbe wasted, and dried vp.
Bishop's Bible (1568)
The waters of the sea shall fayle, and the riuer shall decrease and be dryed vp.
Brenton's Septuagint (LXX)
And the Egyptians shall drink the water that is by the sea, but the river shall fail, and be dried up.
English Revised Version
And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and become dry.
Wycliffe Bible (1395)
And watir of the see schal wexe drie, and the flood schal be desolat, and schal be dried.
Update Bible Version
And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and become dry.
Webster's Bible Translation
And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the rivers shall be wasted and dried up.
New English Translation
The water of the sea will be dried up, and the river will dry up and be empty.
New King James Version
The waters will fail from the sea, And the river will be wasted and dried up.
New Living Translation
The waters of the Nile will fail to rise and flood the fields. The riverbed will be parched and dry.
New Life Bible
The waters of the sea will dry up. The river will become dry.
New Revised Standard
The waters of the Nile will be dried up, and the river will be parched and dry;
J.B. Rotherham Emphasized Bible
And the waters shall be dried up from the great stream, - And the River, shall waste and be dry;
Douay-Rheims Bible
And the water of the sea shall be dried up, and the river shall be wasted and dry.
Revised Standard Version
And the waters of the Nile will be dried up, and the river will be parched and dry;
Young's Literal Translation
And failed have waters from the sea, And a river is wasted and dried up.
THE MESSAGE
The River Nile will dry up, the riverbed baked dry in the sun. The canals will become stagnant and stink, every stream touching the Nile dry up. River vegetation will rot away the banks of the Nile-baked clay, The riverbed hard and smooth, river grasses dried up and gone with the wind. Fishermen will complain that the fishing's been ruined. Textile workers will be out of work, all weavers and workers in linen and cotton and wool Dispirited, depressed in their forced idleness— everyone who works for a living, jobless.
New American Standard Bible (1995)
The waters from the sea will dry up, And the river will be parched and dry.

Contextual Overview

1 A message about Egypt: Look, the Lord is coming on a fast cloud. He will enter Egypt, and all the false gods of Egypt will shake with fear. Egypt's courage will melt away like hot wax. 2 The Lord says, "I will cause the Egyptians to fight against themselves. Men will fight their brothers. Neighbors will be against neighbors. Cities will be against cities. Kingdoms will be against kingdoms. 3 The Egyptians will be afraid and confused. They will ask their false gods and wise men what they should do. They will ask their wizards and magicians, but I will ruin their plans." 4 The Lord God All-Powerful says, "I will give Egypt to a hard master. A powerful king will rule over the people." 5 The water in the Nile River will dry up and disappear. 6 All the rivers will smell very bad. The canals in Egypt will be dry, and the water will be gone. All the water plants will rot. 7 All the plants along the riverbanks will die and blow away. Even the plants at the widest part of the river will dry up, blow away, and disappear. 8 The fishermen, all those who catch fish from the Nile River, will become sad and they will cry. They depend on the Nile River for their food, but it will be dry. 9 Those who make cloth from flax, who weave it into linen, will all be sad. 10 Those who weave cloth will be broken, and those who work for money will be depressed.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

Jeremiah 51:36, Ezekiel 30:12, Zechariah 10:11, Zechariah 14:18

Reciprocal: Genesis 41:1 - the river Job 8:11 - the rush Psalms 107:33 - turneth Isaiah 11:15 - shall smite Isaiah 18:2 - have spoiled Isaiah 32:20 - Blessed Nahum 1:4 - and drieth Nahum 3:8 - that had

Cross-References

Genesis 19:23
Lot was entering the town as the sun came up,
Genesis 19:24
and the Lord began to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. He caused fire and burning sulfur to fall from the sky.
Genesis 19:26
Lot's wife was following behind him and looked back at the city. When she did, she became a block of salt.
Genesis 19:27
Early the next morning, Abraham got up and went to the place where he stood before the Lord .
Leviticus 18:22
"Men, you must not have sexual relations with another man as with a woman. That is a terrible sin!
Leviticus 20:13
"If a man has sexual relations with another man as with a woman, they have committed a terrible sin. They must be put to death. They are responsible for their own death.
Judges 19:22
While the Levite and those who were with him were enjoying themselves, some very bad men from the city surrounded the house. They began beating on the door. They shouted at the old man who owned the house. They said, "Bring out the man who came to your house. We want to have sex with him."
Isaiah 1:9
If the Lord All-Powerful had not allowed a few people to live, we would have been destroyed completely like the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. And that almost happened!
Isaiah 3:9
The look on their faces shows that they are guilty. They are like the people of Sodom; they don't care who sees their sin. But it will be very bad for them. They will get what they deserve.
Jeremiah 3:3
You sinned, so the rain has not come. There has not been any springtime rains. But still you refuse to be ashamed. The look on your face is like that of a prostitute who refuses to be ashamed.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

And the waters shall fail from the sea,.... Which Kimchi understands figuratively of the destruction of the Egyptians by the king of Assyria, compared to the drying up of the waters of the Nile; and others think that the failure of their trade by sea is meant, which brought great revenues into the kingdom: but, by what follows, it seems best to take the words in a literal sense, of the waters of the river Nile, which being dried up, as in the next clause, could not empty themselves into the sea, as they used, and therefore very properly may be said to fail from it; nay, the Nile itself may be called a sea, it being so large a confluence of water:

and the river shall be wasted and dried up; that is, the river Nile, which was not only very useful for their trade and navigation, but the fruitfulness of the country depended upon it; for the want of rain, in the land of Egypt, was supplied by the overflow of this river, at certain times, which brought and left such a slime upon the earth, as made it exceeding fertile; now the drying up of this river was either occasioned by some great drought, which God in judgment sent; or by the practices of some of their princes with this river, by which it was greatly impaired, and its usefulness diminished.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

And the waters shall fail - Here commences a description of the “physical” calamities that would come upon the land, which continues to Isaiah 19:10. The previous verses contained an account of the national calamities by civil wars. It may be observed that discord, anarchy, and civil wars, are often connected with physical calamities; as famine, drought, pestilence. God has the elements, as well as the hearts of people, under his control; and when he chastises a nation, he often mingles anarchy, famine, discord, and the pestilence together. Often, too, civil wars have a “tendency” to produce these calamities. They annihilate industry, arrest enterprise, break up plans of commerce, and divert the attention of people from the cultivation of the soil. This might have been in part the case in Egypt; but it would seem also that God, by direct agency, intended to afflict them by drying up their streams in a remarkable manner.

From the sea - The parallelism here, as well as the whole scope of the passage, requires us to understand this of the Nile. The word ים yâm is sometimes used to denote a large river (see the notes at Isaiah 11:15; Isaiah 18:2). The Nile is often called a sea. Thus Pliny (“Nat. Hist.” ii. 35) says, ‘The water of the Nile resembles the sea.’ Thus, Seneca (“Quaest. Nat.” v. 2) says, ‘By continued accessions of water, it stagnates (stagnat) into the appearance of a broad and turbid sea.’ Compare Herodot. ii. 97; Diod. i. 12, 96; ‘To this day in Egypt, the Nile is el-Bahr, “the sea,” as its most common appellation.’ ‘Our Egyptian servant,’ says Dr. Robinson, ‘who spoke English, always called it “the sea.”’ (“Bib. Rescarches,” vol. i. 542).

And the river - The Nile.

Shall be wasted - This does not mean “entirely,” but its waters would fail so as to injure the country. It would not “overflow” in its accustomed manner, and the consequence would be, that the land would be desolate. It is well known that Egypt derives its great fertility entirely from the overflowing of the Nile. So important is this, that a public record is made at Cairo of the daily rise of the water. When the Nile rises to a less height than twelve cubits, a famine is the inevitable consequence, for then the water does not overflow the land. When it rises to a greater height than sixteen cubits, a famine is almost as certain - for then the superabundant waters are not drained off soon enough to allow them to sow the seed. The height of the inundation, therefore, that is necessary in order to insure a harvest, is from twelve to sixteen cubits. The annual overflow is in the month of August. The prophet here means that the Nile would not rise to the height that was desirable - or the waters should “fail” - and that the consequence would be a famine.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Isaiah 19:5. The river shall be wasted and dried up. — The Nile shall not overflow its banks; and if no inundation, the land must become barren. For, as there is little or no rain in Egypt, its fertility depends on the overflowing of the Nile.


 
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