Isaiah 19:11

The Holy Bible, Berean Study Bible

Contextual Overview

¹This is an oracle concerning Egypt: Behold, the LORD rides on a swift cloud; He is coming to Egypt. The idols of Egypt will tremble before Him, and the hearts of the Egyptians will melt within them. ²"So I will incite Egyptian against Egyptian; brother will fight against brother, neighbor against neighbor, city against city, and kingdom against kingdom. ³Then the spirit of the Egyptians will be emptied out from among them, and I will frustrate their plans, so that they will resort to idols and spirits of the dead, to mediums and spiritists. ⁴I will deliver the Egyptians into the hands of harsh masters, and a fierce king will rule over them," declares the Lord GOD of Hosts. ⁵The waters of the Nile will dry up, and the riverbed will be parched and empty. ⁶The canals will stink; the streams of Egypt will trickle and dry up; the reeds and rushes will wither. ⁷The bulrushes by the Nile, by the mouth of the river, and all the fields sown along the Nile, will wither, blow away, and be no more. ⁸Then the fishermen will mourn, all who cast hooks into the Nile will lament, and those who spread nets on the water will grieve. ⁹Those who work with flax will be dismayed, and the weavers of fine linen will turn pale. ¹⁰The workers in cloth will be dejected, and all the wage earners will be sick at heart.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

the princes: Isaiah 19:3, Isaiah 19:13, Isaiah 29:14, Isaiah 44:25, Job 5:12, Job 5:13, Job 12:17, Psalms 33:10, Jeremiah 49:7, Ezekiel 7:26, 1 Corinthians 1:19, 1 Corinthians 1:20

Zoan: Isaiah 30:4, Numbers 13:22, Psalms 78:12, Psalms 78:43, Ezekiel 30:14

brutish: Psalms 73:22, Psalms 92:6, Proverbs 30:2, Jeremiah 10:14, Jeremiah 10:21

I am: Genesis 41:38, Genesis 41:39, 1 Kings 4:30, Acts 7:22

Reciprocal: Genesis 41:8 - but there Exodus 7:11 - wise men Exodus 8:4 - General Deuteronomy 28:28 - General Joshua 8:14 - he wist not Joshua 8:17 - a man 2 Samuel 15:31 - turn the counsel 1 Kings 12:14 - the counsel 2 Kings 24:20 - through 2 Chronicles 10:10 - Thus shalt Job 39:17 - General Psalms 87:4 - this man Psalms 105:22 - teach Proverbs 11:14 - General Jeremiah 4:9 - that the heart Jeremiah 8:9 - The wise men are Jeremiah 46:17 - Pharaoh Jeremiah 50:35 - her wise men Ezekiel 28:17 - thou hast Obadiah 1:7 - there is 1 Corinthians 2:6 - of the 1 Corinthians 3:19 - the wisdom

Cross-References

Genesis 19:28
He looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and all the land of the plain, and he saw the smoke rising from the land like smoke from a furnace.

Genesis 19:29
So when God destroyed the cities of the plain, He remembered Abraham, and He brought Lot out of the catastrophe that destroyed the cities where he had lived.

2 Kings 6:18
As the Arameans came down against him, Elisha prayed to the LORD, "Please strike these people with blindness." So He struck them with blindness, according to the word of Elisha.

Ecclesiastes 10:15
The toil of a fool wearies him, for he does not know the way to the city.

Isaiah 57:10
You are wearied by your many journeys, but you did not say, "There is no hope!" You found renewal of your strength; therefore you did not grow weak.

Jeremiah 2:36
How unstable you are, constantly changing your ways! You will be disappointed by Egypt just as you were by Assyria.

Acts 13:11
Now look, the hand of the Lord is against you, and for a time you will be blind and unable to see the light of the sun." Immediately mist and darkness came over him, and he groped about, seeking someone to lead him by the hand.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Surely the princes of Zoan [are] fools,.... Zoan was a very ancient city of Egypt, it was built within seven years of Hebron in the land of Judah, Numbers 13:22 here it was that the Lord did those miracles, by the hands of Moses and Aaron, before Pharaoh and his people, in order to oblige him to let Israel go, Psalms 78:12 by which it appears that it was then the royal city, as it seems to have been now; since mention is made of the princes of it, who usually have their residence where the court is. The Targum, Septuagint, and Vulgate Latin versions, call it Tanis, which was the metropolis of one of the nomes or provinces of Egypt, called from it the Tanitic nome q; near it was one of the gates of the Nile, which had from it the name of the Tanitic gate r; the princes of this place, the lords of this nome, though they had princely education, acted a foolish part, in flattering their sovereign, as afterwards mentioned, and in putting him upon doing things destructive to his kingdom and subjects:

the counsel of the wise counsellors of Pharaoh is become brutish; the men of whose privy council were esteemed very wise, and greatly boasted of, and much confided in; and yet the counsel they gave him were such as made them look more like brutes than men:

how say ye unto Pharaoh; the then reigning prince, for Pharaoh was a name common to all the kings of Egypt. Some think their king Cethon is meant, said to be a very foolish king: others Psammiticus; which seems more likely; though there is no need to apply it to any particular king, they being used to say what follows to all their kings:

I [am] the son of the wise; suggesting that wisdom was natural and hereditary to him; though this may not merely respect his immediate ancestors, but remote ones, as Menes or Mizraim, the first king of Egypt, to whom is attributed the invention of arts and sciences; and his son Thoth, the same with Hermes, the Mercury of the Egyptians. The Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic versions, make these words to be spoken by the wise counsellors of themselves, "we are the sons of wise men", and so the next clause; likewise Aben Ezra and Jarchi, also the Targum:

the son of ancient kings? according to these, it is spoken to Pharaoh thus, "and thou the son of kings of old"; of Ham, Mizraim, Thoth, c. the Egyptians boasted much of the antiquity of their kingdom and kings; and they say, from their first king Menes, to Sethon the priest of Vulcan, who lived about the time of this prophecy, were three hundred and forty one generations or ages of men, in which were as many kings and priests; and three hundred generations are equal to ten thousand years s; and so many years, and more, their kings had reigned down to the prophet's time; which was all vain boasting, there being no manner of foundation for it. Vitringa renders it the son of ancient counsellors; this, as the former, being spoken by the counsellors, not of Pharaoh, but themselves.

q Herodot. l. 2. c. 166. Plin. l. 5. c. 9. Ptolem. Geogr. l. 4. c. 5. r Ptolem. ib. Plin. l. 5. c. 10. s Herodot. l. 2. c. 142.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Surely the princes - The following verses, to Isaiah 19:16, are designed to describe further the calamities that were coming upon Egypt by a want of wisdom in their rulers. They would be unable to devise means to meet the impending calamities, and would actually increase the national misery by their unwise counsels. The word ‘princes’ here is taken evidently for the rulers or counselors of state.

Of Zoan - The Vulgate, Septuagint, and Chaldee, render this ‘Tanis.’ Zoan was doubtless the Tans of the Greeks (Herod. ii. 166), and was a city of Lower Egypt, built, according to Moses Numbers 13:22, seven years after Hebron. It is mentioned in Psalms 78:12; Isaiah 19:11, Isaiah 19:13; Isaiah 30:4; Ezekiel 30:14. It was at the entrance of the Tanitic mouth of the Nile, and gave name to it. Its ruins still exist, and there are seen there at present numerous blocks of granite, seven obelisks of granite, and a statue of Isis. It was the capital of the dynasty of the Tanitish kings until the time of Psammetichus; it was at this place principally that the miracles done by Moses were performed. ‘Marvellous things did he in the sight of their fathers in the land of Egypt; in the field of Zoan’ Psalms 78:12. Its ruins are still called “San,” a slight change of the word Zoan. The Ostium Taniticum is now the “Omm Faredje.”

Are fools - They are unable to meet by their counsels the impending calamities. Perhaps their folly was evinced by their flattering their sovereign, and by exciting him to plans that tended to the ruin, rather than the welfare of the kingdom.

The wise counselors of Pharaoh - Pharaoh was the common name of the kings of Egypt in the same way as “Caesar” became afterward the common name of the Roman emperors - and the king who is here intended by Pharaoh is probably Psammetichus (see the note at Isaiah 19:4).

How say ye ... - Why do you “flatter” the monarch? Why remind him of his ancestry? Why attempt to inflate him with the conception of his own wisdom? This was, and is, the common practice of courtiers; and in this way kings are often led to measures most ruinous to their subjects.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Isaiah 19:11. The counsel of the wise counsellors of Pharaoh is become brutish - "Have counselled a brutish counsel"] The sentence as it now stands in the Hebrew, is imperfect: it wants the verb. Archbishop Secker conjectures that the words יועצי פרעה yoatsey pharoh should be transposed; which would in some degree remove the difficulty. But it is to be observed, that the translator of the Vulgate seems to have found in his copy the verb יעצו yaatsu added after פרעה pharoh: Sapientes consiliarii Pharaonis dederunt consilium insipiens, "The wise counsellors of Pharaoh gave unwise counsel." This is probably the true reading: it is perfectly agreeable to the Hebrew idiom, makes the construction of the sentence clear, and renders the transposition of the words above mentioned unnecessary. - L.