Isaiah 44:27

That saith to the deep, be dry,.... The Targum is, "that saith to Babylon, be desolate;'' and most interpreters, Jewish and Christian, understand it of Babylon, which was situated in a watery place,

That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers: That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers - referring to the Euphrates, which has turned into a different channel,

That with a word can and will dry up the sea (which in Scripture is very frequently called the deep, as , &c.) and rivers, and remove all impediments, and make the way plain, that my people may return. Some think these words relate to that stratagem of Cyrus, whereby he diverted, and in a great measure dried up, the river Euphrates, and made it passable for his army. But he seems rather to allude to that great action of God’ s drying up the Red Sea and Jordan, to give passage to the Israelites.

Isaiah 44:27 That saith to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy rivers:Ver. 27. That saith to the deep, Be dry,] i.e., That will put it into the heart of Cyrus to dry up Euphrates, and so to take Babylon; which, according to some, is here called the deep or abyss, because situated in a plain well watered with various rivers, had wealth at will, and many princes who ran into her, as rivers do into the sea. And I will dry up thy rivers.] This Basil expounds of the end of the world. Hex., lib. ii.

(27) That saith to the deep—i.e., to the Euphrates. The words find a literal fulfilment in the strategical operation by which Cyrus turned the river from its usual bed into the Sepharvaim channel, and thus enabled his soldiers to cross on foot (Herod. i. 191). Symbolically the words may mean simply the destruction of the power of Babylon, of which its river was the emblem. (Comp. Revelation 16:12.)

Verse 27. That saith to the deep, Be dry - "Who saith to the deep, Be thou wasted"] Cyrus took Babylon by laying the bed of the Euphrates dry, and leading his army into the city by night through the empty channel of the river. This remarkable circumstance, in which the event so exactly corresponded with the prophecy, was also noted by Jeremiah, Jeremiah 50:38; Jeremiah 51:36. "A drought shall be upon her waters, and they shall be dried up: - I will lay her sea dry And I will scorch up her springs." It is proper here to give some account of the means and method lay which the stratagem of Cyrus was effected. The Euphrates in the middle of the summer, from the melting of the snows on the mountains of Armenia, like the Nile, overflows the country. In order to diminish the inundation, and to carry off the waters, two canals were made by Nebuchadnezzar a hundred miles above the city; the first on the eastern side called Naharmalca, or the Royal River, by which the Euphrates was let into the Tigris; the other on the western side, called Pallacopas, or Naharaga, (נהר אגם nahar agam, The river of the pool,) by which the redundant waters were carried into a vast lake, forty miles square, contrived, not only to lessen the inundation, but for a reservoir, with sluices, to water the barren country on the Arabian side. Cyrus, by turning the whole river into the lake by the Pallacopas, laid the channel, where it ran through the city, almost dry; so that his army entered it, both above and below, by the bed of the river, the water not reaching above the middle of the thigh. By the great quantity - of water let into the lake, the sluices and dams were destroyed; and being never repaired afterwards, the waters spread over the whole country below, and reduced it to a morass, in which the river is lost. Ingens modo et navigabilis, inde tenuis rivus, despectus emoritur; et nusquam manifesto exitit effluit, ut alii omnes, sed deficit. "And thus a navigable river has been totally lost, it having no exit from this morass. No wonder then that the geographical face of this country is completely changed;" MELA iii. 8; HEROD. i. 186, 190; XENOPHON, Cyrop. vii.; ARRIAN vii.

27. the deep] is a figure for the obstacles to the deliverance of Israel. It has been thought by some commentators (including Vitringa and Lowth) that the verse contains an allusion to the well-known stratagem by which Cyrus is said to have got possession of Babylon (Herodotus 1. 185–191). The Hebrew word for “deep” might no doubt be applied to a river, as a cognate word is in Zechariah 10:11. But the recently discovered Cyrus-inscriptions seem to shew that the narrative of Herodotus is legendary. See Introd. p. xviii.

That saith to the deep, Be dry - Lowth supposes, that this refers to the fact that Cyrus took Babylon by diverting from their course the waters of the river Euphrates, and thus leaving the bed of the

24-28. The remaining verses of the chapter virtually make a single paragraph, unbroken in sense; the sense being a confirmation of the divine promises to Israel — that is, to the Church — by