Waterland, after Vitringa: “He shall shake his hand over the Euphrates, and shall smite it into seven outlets ” that is, he shall divide or separate it into seven small rivers, so as to render it easy to be passed over. And the next clause, which he understands, not of the river Nile, but of the Euphrates, the bishop very properly translates, “And he shall shake his hand over the river with his vehement wind and he shall strike it into seven streams, and make them pass over it dry-shod.” Thus also Dr. Bishop Lowth renders the clause, Jehovah shall smite with a drought the tongue, &c., following the Chaldee, which, instead of החרים, he destroyed, reads החריב, he dried up. It is called a tongue, both here and in the Hebrew text, ( Joshua 15:2 Joshua 15:5,) as having some resemblance to a tongue and for a similar reason the name of tongue has been given by geographers to promontories of land which shoot forth into the sea, as this sea shoots out of the main ocean into the land. And the Lord shall utterly destroy - Shall not only divide it, as of old, but shall quite dry it up, that it may be a highway the tongue of the Egyptian sea - The Red sea, which may well be called the Egyptian sea, both because it borders upon Egypt, and because the Egyptians were drowned in it. On the other view, the words may be interpreted as meaning literally, “I will smite it into seven streams,” and figuratively, “I will reduce the power of Assyria to insignificance.”īenson Commentary Isaiah 11:15-16. On this view the words that follow, “will smite it in the seven streams,” refer naturally enough to the seven mouths that enclose and intersect the Delta of the Nile.
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He contemplates a return from Egypt as much as from Assyria ( Isaiah 11:11).
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The prophet describes, in language which almost excludes the thought of a merely literal fulfilment, a renewal of wonders transcending those of the Exodus, and it was natural that his description should bear the local colouring of the region.
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In Isaiah 19:5, however, it is found, as here, in parallelism with the “sea” of Egypt, and as it there refers to the Nile, that meaning may well be accepted here. The “river,” on the other hand, is the word Commonly used for the Euphrates ( Genesis 31:21 Joshua 24:2), and that meaning is assigned to it here by most commentators, who refer to Isaiah 44:27 as a parallel. Better, as in Joshua 15:2 Joshua 15:5 Joshua 18:19, the “bay” or “gulf.” The “Egyptian sea” is the Gulf of Suez, and the prophet pictures to himself another marvel like the passage of the Red Sea in Exodus 14:22. Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(15) The tongue.