19:2 “I will provoke civil strife in Egypt, 1
brothers will fight with each other,
as will neighbors,
cities, and kingdoms. 2
19:6 The canals 3 will stink; 4
the streams of Egypt will trickle and then dry up;
the bulrushes and reeds will decay,
19:13 The officials of Zoan are fools,
the officials of Memphis 5 are misled;
the rulers 6 of her tribes lead Egypt astray.
30:7 Egypt is totally incapable of helping. 8
For this reason I call her
‘Proud one 9 who is silenced.’” 10
37:25 I dug wells
and drank water. 11
With the soles of my feet I dried up
all the rivers of Egypt.’
1 tn Heb I will provoke Egypt against Egypt” (NAB similar).
2 tn Heb “and they will fight, a man against his brother, and a man against his neighbor, city against city, kingdom against kingdom.” Civil strife will extend all the way from the domestic level to the provincial arena.
3 tn Heb “rivers” (so KJV, ASV); NAB, CEV “streams”; TEV “channels.”
4 tn The verb form appears as a Hiphil in the Qumran scroll 1QIsaa; the form in MT may be a so-called “mixed form,” reflecting the Hebrew Hiphil stem and the functionally corresponding Aramaic Aphel stem. See HALOT 276 s.v. I זנח.
5 tn Heb “Noph” (so KJV); most recent English versions substitute the more familiar “Memphis.”
6 tn Heb “the cornerstone.” The singular form should be emended to a plural.
7 tn Heb “and they will be afraid and embarrassed because of Cush their hope and Egypt their beauty.”
8 tn Heb “As for Egypt, with vanity and emptiness they help.”
9 tn Heb “Rahab” (רַהַב, rahav), which also appears as a name for Egypt in Ps 87:4. The epithet is also used in the OT for a mythical sea monster symbolic of chaos. See the note at 51:9. A number of English versions use the name “Rahab” (e.g., ASV, NAB, NASB, NIV, NRSV) while others attempt some sort of translation (cf. CEV “a helpless monster”; TEV, NLT “the Harmless Dragon”).
10 tn The MT reads “Rahab, they, sitting.” The translation above assumes an emendation of הֵם שָׁבֶת (hem shavet) to הַמָּשְׁבָּת (hammashbat), a Hophal participle with prefixed definite article, meaning “the one who is made to cease,” i.e., “destroyed,” or “silenced.” See HALOT 444-45 s.v. ישׁב.
11 tc The Hebrew text has simply, “I dug and drank water.” But the parallel text in 2 Kgs 19:24 has “foreign waters.” זָרִים (zarim, “foreign”) may have accidentally dropped out of the Isaianic text by homoioteleuton (cf. NCV, NIV, NLT). Note that the preceding word, מַיִם (mayim, “water) also ends in mem (ם). The Qumran scroll 1QIsaa has “foreign waters” for this line. However, in several other passages the 1QIsaa scroll harmonizes with 2 Kgs 19 against the MT (Isa 36:5; 37:9, 20). Since the addition of “foreign” to this text in Isaiah by a later scribe would be more likely than its deletion, the MT reading should be accepted.