Isaiah 19:18

In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt,.... Here opens a scene of mercy, a prophecy of good things to the Egyptians in future times; for this is not to be understood of the selfsame time,

In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the language of Canaan, and swear to the LORD of hosts; one shall be called, The city of destruction. -Suffering shall lead to repentance.

In that day; after that time, as this phrase is used, 18:7, and oft elsewhere. In the times of the gospel, which are oft noted in the prophets by that very expression. Five cities; a considerable number of their chief cities, a certain number being put for an uncertain. Speak the language of Canaan; profess the Jewish religion, agree with them in the same mind; which is fitly signified by speaking the same language, because out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Thus the changing and purifying of a people’ s lips is used to signify the change of their hearts and lives, ; and praising God with one mouth, to note their unity or consent in the faith, . Swear to the Lord of hosts: it is well observed by some learned interpreters, that he doth not say swear by the Lord, which is the most common phrase, and which, being one eminent part and act of worship, is put for the whole; but swear to the Lord; which phrase is also used ; and it implies the dedication, or oblation, and yielding up of a person or thing to the Lord, by a solemn vow, or covenant, or oath, as appears by the places now quoted. In like manner God is said to swear to a man, , and one man to another, , when they oblige themselves by oath to do such or such a thing for them. And therefore what is called swearing to God, , is rendered or expounded bowing the knee (which signifies the subjection of a man’ s self) to God, and confessing to God, . One; not one of the five, for they are supposed to be saved in the foregoing clause; but one city, or another city, the sixth city. As divers cities shall be converted and saved, so some other cities shall continue in their impenitency, and be destroyed. Others render this clause thus, one of them shall be called, ( or, shall be; for to be called is oft put for to be.) The city of the sun; or, as the Grecians call it, Heliopolis; which the Egyptians called On, ; which was a very eminent city, and a chief seat of idolatry, being a city of priests, as Strabo reports; and therefore its conversion to the faith was more wonderful.

Isaiah 19:18 In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the language of Canaan, and swear to the LORD of hosts; one shall be called, The city of destruction.Ver. 18. In that day.] When the gospel shall be there preached, whether by Mark the evangelist or others, as Clement, Origen, Didymus. Five cities.] A considerable number of Egyptians. Speak the language of Canaan.] Called the Jews’ language, the Hebrew tongue, wherein were written the lively oracles of God. This language, therefore, the elect Egyptians shall learn, and labour for that "pure lip," to "speak as the oracles of God"; "wholesome words"; "right words"; "words of wisdom"; "of truth and soberness"; to be examples to others, not only in faith and conversation, but also "in words and communication." And swear to the Lord of hosts.] Devote themselves to his fear and service, taking a corporal oath for that purpose as in baptism, and other holy covenants, whereupon haply they might be enabled to speak with tongues, the holy tongue especially, as most necessary for Christians. Here then we have a description of a true Christian, not such as the Jesuits in their catechism give us, viz., A Christian is he who believeth whatsoever the church of Rome commandeth to be believed, swearing fealty to her. One shall be called the city of destruction,] i.e., Nevertheless there shall be a few cities that shall despise Christian religion; and shall therefore be destroyed for neglecting so great salvation. It shall be easier for Sodom one day than for such. Others render the text Heliopolis, or the city of the sun, shall be accounted one, sc., of those five converted cities, and become consecrated to the Sun of righteousness. Nempe susceptione baptismi. - Piscat. Joseph. Ant., lib. xiii. cap. 6.

(18) In that day shall five cities in the land of Egypt speak the language of Canaan.—The prophecy is, it will be noticed, parallel to that affecting Ethiopia in Isaiah 18:7, and at least expresses the yearnings of the prophet’s heart after the conversion of Egypt to the worship of Jehovah. Like the previous prediction, it connects itself with Psalms 87, as recording the admission of proselytes as from other countries, so also from Rahab (i.e., Egypt). The “five cities” stand either as a certain number for an uncertain (Isaiah 30:17; Isaiah 17:6; Leviticus 26:8; 1 Corinthians 14:19), or possibly as the actual number of the chief or royal cities of Egypt. The “language of Canaan” is Hebrew, and the prediction is that this will become the speech of the worshippers of Jehovah in the Egyptian cities. There is to be one universal speech for the universal Church of the true Israel. And swear to the Lord of hosts.—The oath, as in the parallel phrase of Isa 45:23, is one of allegiance, and implies, therefore, something like a covenant of obedience. The city of destruction.—There is probably something like a play on the name of the Egyptian city On, the Greek Heliopolis, the City of the Sun (Heb., Ir-ha-kheres), and the word which the prophet actually uses (Ir-ha-cheres), the “city of destruction.” The paronomasia, like in character to Ezekiel’s transformation of On into Aven, “nothingness,” or “vanity” (Ezekiel 30:17), or Hosea’s of Beth-el (“house of God”) into Bethaven (“ house of nothingness”) (Hosea 4:15), was intended to indicate the future demolition of the sun-idols, and is so interpreted in the Targum on this passage, “Bethshemesh (i.e., Heliopolis), whose future fate shall be destruction.” The word for destruction is cognate with the verb used of Gideon’s breaking down the image of Baal, in Judges 6:25; and in Jeremiah’s prophecy (Jeremiah 43:13), “He shall break the pillars in the house of the sun,” we may probably trace an allusive reference to Isaiah’s language. Other meanings, such as “city of rescue,” “city of protection,” “city of restoration,” have been suggested, but on inadequate grounds. The Vulg. gives civitas solis. The LXX. rendering, “city asedek,” apparently following a different reading of the Hebrew, and giving the meaning, “city of righteousness,” was probably connected historically with the erection of a Jewish temple at Leon-topolis by Onias IV., in the time of Ptolemy Philomêtor, which for some two centuries shared with the Temple at Jerusalem the homage of Egyptian Jews. Onias and his followers pointed to Isaiah’s words as giving a sanction to what their brethren in Palestine looked on as a rival and sacrilegious worship.

Verse 18. The city of destruction - "The city of the sun"] עיר החרס ir hacheres. This passage is attended with much difficulty and obscurity. First, in regard to the true reading. It is well known that Onias applied it to his own views, either to procure from the king of Egypt permission to build his temple in the Hieropolitan Nome, or to gain credit and authority to it when built; from the notion which he industriously propagated, that Isaiah had in this place prophesied of the building of such a temple. He pretended that the very place where it should be built was expressly named by the prophet, עיר החרס ir hacheres, the city of the sun. This possibly may have been the original reading. The present text has עיר ההרס ir haheres, the city of destruction; which some suppose to have been introduced into the text by the Jews of Palestine afterwards, to express their detestation of the place, being much offended with this schismatical temple in Egypt. Some think the latter to have been the true reading, and that the prophet himself gave this turn to the name out of contempt, and to intimate the demolition of this Hieropolitan temple; which in effect was destroyed by Vespasian's orders, after that of Jerusalem, "Videtur propheta consulto scripsisse הרס heres, pro חרס cheres, ut alibi scribitur בית און beith aven pro בית אל beith El: איש בשת ish bosheth pro איש בעל ish baal, c. Vide Lowth in loc." - Secker. "It seems that the prophet designedly wrote הרס heres, destruction, for חרס cheres, the sun: as elsewhere בית און beith aven, the house of iniquity, is written for בית אל beith El, the house of God איש בשת ish bosheth for איש בעל ish baal," c. But on the supposition that עיר ההרס air haheres is the true reading, others understand it differently. The word הרס heres in Arabic signifies a lion and Conrad Ikenius has written a dissertation (Dissert. Philol. Theol. XVI.) to prove that the place here mentioned is not Heliopolis, as it is commonly supposed to be, but Leontopolis in the Heliopolitan Nome, as it is indeed called in the letter, whether real or pretended, of Onias to Ptolemy, which Josephus has inserted in his Jewish Antiquities, lib. xiii. c. 3. And I find that several persons of great learning and judgment think that Ikenius has proved the point beyond contradiction. See Christian. Muller. Satura Observ. Philolog. Michaelis Bibliotheque Oriental, Part v., p. 171. But, after ali, I believe that neither Onias, Heliopolis, nor Leontopolis has any thing to do with this subject. The application of this place of Isaiah to Onias's purpose seems to have been a mere invention, and in consequence of it there may perhaps have been some unfair management to accommodate the text to that purpose; which has been carried even farther than the Hebrew text; for the Greek version has here been either translated from a corrupted text, or wilfully mistranslated or corrupted, to serve the same cause.

18. The verse may mean either (1) that an indefinite, but small, number of Egyptian cities shall be converted to the worship of Jehovah and adopt Hebrew as at least their sacred language; or (2) that at a certain epoch there shall be five (and no more) Jewish colonies in Egypt maintaining their national language and religion. On the former view “five” is a round number (as in ch. Isaiah 30:17; Genesis 43:34; Leviticus 26:8; 1 Samuel 17:40; 1 Samuel 21:3; 2 Kings 7:13), and the verse is a prophecy of the first beginnings of the conversion of Egypt—a “day of small things.” This interpretation, although grammatically defensible, is not natural. No parallel can be found in Isaiah’s writings to the anticipation of a gradual dissemination of the true religion by sporadic conversions. He always treats the nations as units, and it is very questionable if the idea of a religious schism within the Egyptian nationality could have presented itself to him or his contemporaries as a desirable thing, or a realisation of the Messianic hope. If we adopt the second view the prophecy must have been written at a time when the prospect of Hebrew-speaking Jewish communes in Egypt was a natural expression of the anticipation that the influence of the Jewish religion would extend to that country. This was not the case at the very late date maintained by some critics (b.c. 160). By that time the Egyptian Jews had so completely abandoned their native tongue that a Greek translation of the Scriptures had become necessary for their use. This part of the prophecy is more intelligible at a considerably earlier period, before the universal solvent of the Greek language had begun to leaven the varied nationalities of the old world.—It is of course impossible to identify the “five cities.” Hitzig has attempted it by the help of Jer 44:1, adding to the three towns there mentioned, Heliopolis and Leontopolis (see below). one shall be called, The city of destruction] The exegesis of this clause is complicated by a diversity of text. (α) The received text has ‘ξr hahereṣ ?, which in Hebrew can only mean “the city of Destruction.” The insurmountable objection to this reading is that it is inconsistent with the favourable general sense of the verse; for the translation “city of [the] destruction of idolatry, &c.” is quite unwarranted. Some, however, explain the word by haris, an Arabic epithet of the lion, rendering, “city of the Lion,” i.e. Leontopolis, where the Jewish Temple was built. This might be intelligible as a correction of the reading to be next mentioned; hardly as an independent text. Moreover, the Greek translator of Isaiah knew nothing of it, but followed an entirely different reading (γ below). (β) Another reading, found in some Hebrew MSS. and followed by the Vulg., is ‘ξr haḥ ?eres, “city of the Sun,” i.e. Heliopolis. This gives a good sense.

In that day - The word ‘day’ is used in Scripture in a large signification, “as including the whole period under consideration,” or the whole time that is embraced in the scope of a prophecy.

18. In that day — “Day” has here, probably, the large meaning of the whole period included in this prophecy. Five cities — Probably meaning several — the definite number being used for an indefinite.