Isaiah 11:15 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Isaiah 11:15
And the LORD shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea; and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river, and shall smite it in the seven streams, and make men go over dryshod.
to seclude · conjunction + verb, hiphil sequential perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
tongue
לְשׁ֣וֹןle.Shon
H3956
the tongue (of man or animals) · noun, common both genders singular construct
Egyptian
מִצְרַ֔יִםmitz.Ra.yim
H4714
Mitsrajim · proper noun, a place name
sea
יָםyom-
H3220
a sea (as breaking in noisy surf) or large body of water · noun, common masculine singular construct
mighty
בַּעְיָ֣םba'.Yam
H5868
probably meaning strength · preposition + noun, common both genders singular construct
wind
רוּח֑וֹru.Cho
H7307
wind · noun, common feminine singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
shake
וְהֵנִ֥יףve.he.Nif
H5130
to quiver (i.e. vibrate up and down · conjunction + verb, hiphil sequential perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
hand
יָד֛וֹya.Do
H3027
a hand (the open one (indicating power · noun, common both genders singular construct + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
river
הַנָּהָ֖רha.na.Har
H5104
a stream (including the sea · definite article + noun, common masculine singular absolute
smite
וְהִכָּ֙הוּ֙ve.hi.Ka.hu
H5221
to strike (lightly or severely · conjunction + verb, hiphil sequential perfect, 3rd person masculine singular + pronominal suffix, 3rd person masculine singular
seven
לְשִׁבְעָ֣הle.shiv.'Ah
H7651
seven (as the sacred full one) · preposition + cardinal number, both genders singular absolute
streams
נְחָלִ֔יםne.cha.Lim
H5158
a stream · noun, common masculine plural absolute
over
וְהִדְרִ֖יךְve.hid.Rikh
H1869
to tread · conjunction + verb, hiphil sequential perfect, 3rd person masculine singular
dryshod
בַּנְּעָלִֽיםba.ne.'a.Lim
H5275
properly · preposition with the article + noun, common masculine plural absolute
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Zechariah 10:11 And he shall pass through the sea with affliction, and shall smite the waves in the sea, and all the deeps of the river shall dry up: and th…
Revelation 16:12 And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the…
Isaiah 50:2 Wherefore, when I came, was there no man? when I called, was there none to answer? Is my hand shortened at all, that it cannot redeem? or ha…
Isaiah 7:20 In the same day shall the Lord shave with a razor that is hired, namely, by them beyond the river, by the king of Assyria, the head, and the…
Isaiah 19:16 In that day shall Egypt be like unto women: and it shall be afraid and fear because of the shaking of the hand of the LORD of hosts, which h…
Isaiah 19:5-10 And the waters shall fail from the sea, and the river shall be wasted and dried up.
Isaiah 51:9-10 Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Ra…
Ezekiel 29:10 Behold, therefore I am against thee, and against thy rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the tower of…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Isaiah 11:10–end
We have here a further prophecy of the enlargement and advancement of the kingdom of the Messiah, under the type and figure of the flourishing condition of the kingdom of Judah in the latter end of Hezekiah's reign, after the defeat of Sennacherib.
I. This prediction was in part accomplished when the great things God did for Hezekiah and his people proved as an ensign, inviting the neighbouring nations to them to enquire of the wonders done in the land, on which errand the king of Babylon's ambassadors came. To them the Gentiles sought; and Jerusalem, the rest or habitation of the Jews, was then glorious, Isa 11:10. Then many of the Israelites who belonged to the kingdom of the ten tribes, w…
There shall be a second exodus, destined to eclipse even the former one from Egypt in its wonders. So the prophecies elsewhere (Psa 68:22; Exo 14:22; Zac 10:11). The same deliverance furnishes the imagery by which the return from Babylon is described (Isa 48:20-21).
destroy--literally, "devote," or "doom," that is, dry up; for what God dooms, perishes (Psa 106:9 Nah 1:4).
tongue--the Bubastic branch of the Nile [VITRINGA]; but as the Nile was not the obstruction to the exodus, it is rather the west tongue or Heroöpolite fork of the Red Sea.
with . . . mighty wind--such as the "strong east wind" (Exo 14:21), by which God made a way for Israel through the Red Sea. The Hebrew for "mighty…
And the Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea,.... Which Kimchi and Abarbinel interpret of the Egyptian river Sichor, or the Nile; others of a bay of the Egyptian sea, so called because in the form of a tongue; the destroying of it designs the drying of it up, so that people might pass over it dry shod; the allusion is to the drying up of the Red Sea, when the Israelites came out of Egypt, and passed through it, as on dry land; and it intends the destruction of Egypt itself, not literally by the Romans, in the times of Augustus Caesar, as Jerom thinks, who interprets the "strong wind", in the following clause, of them; but figuratively, the destruction of Rome, which is s…
The Church Fathers
It is said, as Paul witnesses: "And from sin He condemned sin." He bound his tongue with a cord, because by means of the likeness of sinful flesh He swept away all his deceitful arguments from the hearts of His Elect. For behold, when the Lord appears in the flesh, the tongue of Leviathan is bound, because, when His truth had become known, those doctrines of falsehood were silenced. For where is now the error of the Academicians, who endeavour to establish on sure grounds that nothing is sure, who with shameless brow demand from their hearers belief in their assertions, when they declare that nothing is true? Where is the superstition of the Mathematicians, who, looking up at the courses of the constellations, make the lives of men to depend on the motions of the stars? Though the birth of twins often scatters their doctrine to the winds; for though born at one and the same moment, they do not abide in the same kind of conversation. Where are those many false teachings, which we abstain from enumerating, for fear of digressing far from the course of our commentary? But every false doctrine has now been silenced, because the Lord has bound the tongue of Leviathan by the cord of His Incarnation. Whence it is also well said by the Prophet: "And the Lord shall lay waste the tongue of the Egyptian sea." For the 'tongue of the sea,' is the knowledge of secular learning. But it is well called 'the Egyptian sea;' because it is darkened with the gloom of sin. The Lord, therefore, laid waste the tongue of the Egyptian sea, because by manifesting Himself in the flesh, He destroyed the false wisdom of this world. The tongue of Leviathan is, therefore, bound with a cord, because the preaching of the old sinner was bound by the likeness of sinful flesh.
And the Lord will dry up the tongue of the sea of Egypt, and he will lift his hand over the river with the strength of his spirit, and he will strike it in the seven streams, so that people can cross it in sandals. And there will be a highway for the remnant of my people who are left from Assyria, just as there was for Israel on the day when they came up from the land of Egypt. Just as Edom and Moab, and the sons of Ammon will submit their hands to the Apostles, so that they may obey the preaching of the Gospel, in the same way the Lord himself, who fulfilled those things in his Apostles, will dry up not the sea according to the Septuagint, but according to the Hebrews, the tongue of the sea of Egypt, which previously blasphemed against the Lord and presided over the Egyptian superstition. And in the Psalms we read: This great and spacious sea, wherein are reptiles without number (Psalm 10:25-26). It is said of them: This dragon, whom you have made to mock at him. Therefore, he shall desolate, that is, put under a curse, as Theodotion, Aquila, and Symmachus translated it, the tongue of the Egyptian sea, and he shall lift up his hand over the rivers of Egypt in the strength of his spirit, or his most violent spirit, which we understand to be the kingdom of the Romans. For when Caesar Augustus was reigning (Luke 2), when the flower of Jesse's root ascended, and the first census was made in the Roman world, the most powerful kingdom of the Egyptians, which lasted for many generations, was destroyed by the death of Cleopatra, and the Egyptian river was struck into seven streams, or into seven valleys. For the Nile, which previously flowed in one channel and was impassable, was divided and cut into seven very humble valleys and streams, so that it could be crossed on foot. However, this symbolically signifies that the nation of the Egyptians, given over to such great idolatry and worthless superstition, consecrated hawks, owls, dogs, goats, and donkeys with divine names, in order to distribute the infinite power of the kingdom through individual judges of the Roman empire, so that Thebes has one judge, Libya has another, Pentapolis has another, Egypt has another, Alexandria has another, and various regions, which the Egyptians call 'laws'. Therefore, under the metaphor, the Nile is divided into parts and cut into streams, so that the Evangelical word can flow…
Dictionary and topics
Bay — Denotes the estuary of the Dead Sea at the mouth of the Jordan (Josh. 15:5; 18:19), also the southern extremity of the same sea (15:2). The same Hebrew word is rendered “tongue” in Isa. 11:15, where…
Red Sea — The sea so called extends along the west coast of Arabia for about 1,400 miles, and separates Asia from Africa. It is connected with the Indian Ocean, of which it is an arm, by the Strait of…
Jews, The · Promises respecting: Restoration to their own land — Promises respecting: Restoration to their own land
Nile · General references — General references
Nile, The River · Empties itself into the Mediterranean Sea by seven streams — Empties itself into the Mediterranean Sea by seven streams
Sea, The · Great rivers often called — Great rivers often called
Wind, The · Drying nature of — Drying nature of
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
And the Lord will utterly destroy. In this verse he means nothing else than that the Lord, by his amazing power, will open for his people a way, which formerly appeared to be shut up. He speaks figuratively. What he calls a tongue is "a bay of the sea;" for when the sea penetrates into the land, and occupies a part of it, there is a resemblance to a person putting out his tongue. He therefore means the Egyptian sea and Egypt itself, as he afterwards more fully explains. But he chiefly mentions the sea and the rivers, because they protect the countries and shut up every entrance.
And will stretch out the hand over the river in the strength of his wind. He undoubtedly means the Nile, which wa…
He dwells still longer upon the miracles in which the antitypical redemption will resemble the typical one. "And Jehovah pronounces the ban upon the sea-tongue of Egypt, and swings His hand over the Euphrates in the glow of His breath, and smites it into seven brooks, and makes it so that men go through in shoes. And there will be a road for the remnant of His people that shall be left, out of Asshur, as it was for Israel in the day of its departure out of the land of Egypt." The two countries of the diaspora mentioned first are Asshur and Egypt. And Jehovah makes a way by His miraculous power for those who are returning out of both and across both. The sea-tongue of Egypt, which runs betwee…
Using imagery from Israel’s past exodus, Isaiah encouraged his listeners by promising that God would bring his people out of Assyria the way he brought them out of Egypt (Exod 14:29–15:18; see also Rev 16:12).
Rashi on Isaiah 11:15
And...shall dry up [lit. shall cut off] to dry it, so that the exiles of Israel will pass through it from Egypt.
over the river The Euphrates River, for the exiles from Assyria to cross.
with the strength of His wind Heb. בַּעְיָם. This is hapax legomenon in Scripture, and according to the context it can be interpreted as “with the strength of His wind.”
into seven streams into seven segments, for the aforementioned seven exiles: from Assyria and from Egypt, etc. Those from the islands of the sea are not from that side.
and He shall lead the exiles within it.
with shoes on dry land.