Isaiah19chapter 19

Egypt was the Nile, and the Nile was one annual flood. The river rose, spread over the fields, dropped its silt, and receded; canals and dikes carried the water inland and reservoirs held it. Everything hung on that. So when Isaiah says the waters will fail and the riverbed dry up, he is not describing an inconvenience. He is describing the end of a civilization's engine.

Then he lists the industries in order. Fishermen with hooks and dragnets mourn — Nile fishing fed the country. The workers in combed flax and the weavers of white cloth are ruined; linen was Egypt's signature export, and the reed and papyrus beds beside the water supplied its paper and its boats. The chapter reads like a trade report.

The political picture is accurate to the era. Egypt in these decades really was divided against itself, with rival dynasts in the Delta before the Nubians consolidated the country, and then it fell to Assyria — Esarhaddon in 671 BC and Ashurbanipal in 663, when Thebes was sacked. Isaiah also names its famous advisors: the princes of Zoan in the Delta and of Noph, that is Memphis, and the wise men whose reputation for ancient wisdom was known everywhere. He says the counselors will give stupid counsel, which is the sharpest thing you could say about Egypt.

The last third turns astonishing. An altar to the LORD in the middle of Egypt, five cities speaking the language of Canaan, Egyptians praying and being answered. Jewish communities did in fact take root there: a colony at Elephantine, far up the Nile, had its own temple to the God of Israel in the 400s BC, documented in their own Aramaic letters, and Alexandria later held one of the largest Jewish populations on earth.