Discovery BoxIsaiah 19:5-9 
Context19:5 The water of the sea will be dried up,
and the river will dry up and be empty. 1
19:6 The canals 2 will stink; 3
the streams of Egypt will trickle and then dry up;
the bulrushes and reeds will decay,
19:7 along with the plants by the mouth of the river. 4
All the cultivated land near the river
will turn to dust and be blown away. 5
19:8 The fishermen will mourn and lament,
all those who cast a fishhook into the river,
and those who spread out a net on the water’s surface will grieve. 6
19:9 Those who make clothes from combed flax will be embarrassed;
those who weave will turn pale. 7
1 tn Heb “will dry up and be dry.” Two synonyms are joined for emphasis.
2 tn Heb “rivers” (so KJV, ASV); NAB, CEV “streams”; TEV “channels.”
3 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.
4 tn Heb “the plants by the river, by the mouth of the river.”
5 tn Heb “will dry up, [being] scattered, and it will vanish.”
6 tn Or perhaps, “will disappear”; cf. TEV “will be useless.”
7 tn BDB 301 s.v. חוֹרִי suggests the meaning “white stuff” for חוֹרִי (khori); the Qumran scroll 1QIsaa has חָוֵרוּ (khaveru), probably a Qal perfect, third plural form of חוּר, (khur, “be white, pale”). See HALOT 299 s.v. I חור. The latter reading is assumed in the translation above.
