Isaiah 19:2

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

I will: Isaiah 19:13, Isaiah 19:14, Isaiah 9:21, Judges 7:22, Judges 9:23, 1 Samuel 14:16, 1 Samuel 14:20, 2 Chronicles 20:22, 2 Chronicles 20:23, Ezekiel 38:21, Matthew 12:25, Revelation 17:12-17

set: Heb. mingle

Reciprocal: 1 Kings 16:21 - divided Isaiah 19:4 - a cruel lord Jeremiah 46:12 - stumbled Jeremiah 51:46 - ruler against Ezekiel 30:4 - the sword Haggai 2:22 - every Zechariah 8:10 - for Matthew 24:7 - nation shall Mark 3:24 - General Mark 13:8 - nation shall Luke 11:17 - Every

Cross-References

Genesis 18:4
Let a little water be brought, that you may wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree.

Genesis 19:17
As soon as the men had brought them out, one of them said, "Run for your lives! Do not look back, and do not stop anywhere on the plain! Flee to the mountains, or you will be swept away!"

Genesis 19:21
"Very well," he answered, "I will grant this request as well, and will not demolish the town you indicate.

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.

Acts 16:15
And when she and her household had been baptized, she urged us, "If you consider me a believer in the Lord, come and stay at my house." And she persuaded us.

Hebrews 13:2
Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

And I will set the Egyptians against the Egyptians,.... Or mingle and confound them together; in which confusion they should fall upon and destroy one another, as the Midianites did: the phrase is expressive of rebellions and civil wars, as the following words explain it; and which show, that the calamities of Egypt should be brought upon them, not by means of a foreign invasion, but by internal quarrels, and other means, which the Lord would in judgment send among them:

and they shall fight everyone against his brother, and everyone against his neighbour; and destroy one another:

city against city; of which there were great numbers in Egypt; in the times of Amasis, it is said s, there were twenty thousand:

[and] kingdom against kingdom; for though Egypt was but originally one kingdom, yet upon the death of Sethon, one of its kings, who had been a priest of Vulcan, there being no successor, twelve of the nobility started up, and set up themselves as kings, and divided the kingdom into twelve parts t, and reigned in confederacy, for the space of fifteen years; when, falling out among themselves, they excluded Psammiticus, one of the twelve, from any share of government; who gathering an army together, fought with and conquered the other eleven, and seized the whole kingdom to himself, and who seems afterwards regarded in this prophecy; all this happened in the times of Manasseh king of Judah, and so in or quickly after Isaiah's time: though some understand this of the civil wars between Apries and Amasis, in the times of Nebuchadnezzar. The Septuagint version renders the phrase here, "nome against nome"; for the whole land of Egypt, by Sesostris, one of its kings, was divided into thirty six u nomes, districts, or provinces, whose names are given by Herodotus w, Pliny x, and others; for so the words of that version should be rendered, and not as they are by the Latin interpreter, and in the Arabic version, which follows it, "law upon law".

s Herodot. l. 2. c. 177. t Ib. c. 147. u There were ten of them in Thebais, the same number in Delta, and sixteen between them. w Euterpe, sive l. 2. c. 164, 165, 166. x Nat. Hist. I. 5. c. 9. Ptolem. Geograph. l. 4. c. 4. Strabo Geogr. l. 17. P. 541.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

And I will set - (סכסכתי sı̂ksaketı̂y). This word (from סכך sākak) means properly “to cover,” to spread over, to hide, conceal, to protect. Another signification of the verb is, to weave, to intermingle. It may mean here, ‘I will arm the Egyptians against each other’ (Gesenius); or, as in our version, ‘I will mingle, confound, or throw them into discord and strife.’ The Septuagint renders it, Ἐπεγερθήσονται Epegerthēsontai - ‘They shall be excited,’ or, ‘raised up.’ Symmachus, Συμβαλῶ Sumbalō. Syriac and Chaldee, ‘I will excite.’ The sense is, that there would be discord and civil war, and this is traced to the agency or overruling providence of God - meaning that he would “permit and overrule” it. Compare the notes at Isaiah 45:7 : ‘I make peace, and I create evil; I, Yahweh, do all these things;’ Amos 3:6 : ‘Shall there be evil in a city and Jehovah hath not done it?’ The civil war here referred to was probably that which arose between the twelve kings in the time of the dodekarchy (see the Analysis to the chapter), and which resulted in the single dominion of Psammetichus. Dr. Newton (“On the Prophecies,” xii.) supposes, however, that the prophet refers to the civil wars between Apries and Amasis at the time of the invasion by Nebuchadnezzar. But it agrees much better with the former discord than with this. The description which follows is that of anarchy or civil strife, where “many” parties are formed, and would naturally lead to the supposition that there were more than two engaged.

And kingdom against kingdom - Septuagint, Νόμος έπὶ νόμων Nomos epi nomōn - ‘Nome against nomes.’ Egypt was formerly divided into forty-two “nomes” or districts. The version by the Septuagint was made in Egypt, and the translators would naturally employ the terms which were in common use. Still the event referred to was probably not that of one “nome” contending against another, but a civil war in which one dynasty would be excited against another (Gesenius), or when there would be anarchy and strife among the different members of the dodekarchy. See the Analysis of the chapter.