The Road to Egypt Leads Away from the Voice They Refuse

“Rebellious children” is banim sorerim, the phrase of Deuteronomy 21:18 for “a stubborn and rebellious son” who will not obey father or mother, the worst case in Israel’s family law. Judah’s statesmen are cast as that son. “Add sin to sin” describes policy that compounds itself, each step requiring another.

“Have not asked at my mouth” is the charge laid against Joshua when he made the treaty with the Gibeonites and “asked not counsel at the mouth of the LORD” (Joshua 9:14). A king’s “shadow” was his protection; in Jotham’s fable the bramble invites the trees to “put your trust in my shadow” (Judges 9:15).

Egypt did fail when it mattered. In 701 BC Sennacherib beat an Egyptian and Nubian army sent to relieve the Philistine city of Ekron, at Eltekeh, and then turned on Judah. The Rabshakeh mocks the alliance in 36:6 as leaning on “the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt”.

Zoan was the delta capital (19:11); Hanes is most likely Heracleopolis, well to the south beyond Memphis, a seat of Egyptian rulers. Judah’s envoys travelled deep into Egypt, to more than one court. The verse gives the diplomatic itinerary, and the next verse gives its result.

Five negatives are stacked up: not profit, not help, not profit again, shame, reproach. The written Hebrew of “were all ashamed” can be read as “made to stink”, and the tradition of reading aloud gives the milder word. The embassy came home humiliated.

“The burden of the beasts of the south” is a mock heading, as though the pack animals had an oracle of their own. The desert road to Egypt is described in the words of Deuteronomy 8:15, “that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents”, the desert Israel crossed coming out. The caravan crosses it going back.

“In vain” is hevel, breath or vapour, the word Ecclesiastes uses for everything that vanishes. The name translated “their strength” is Rahab, the proud sea monster, which Psalm 87:4 uses as a name for Egypt and which 51:9 pictures cut down: “Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab?”

A “table” is a tablet, like the stone tables of the law. The last phrase, “for ever and ever”, can with different vowels be “for a witness for ever”, which is how the Greek and Syriac read it. The writing is evidence to be produced later, when the promises of Egypt have come to nothing.

“Lying children” are sons who deny, from kachash, to disown or deceive. The Song of Moses calls Israel “children in whom is no faith” (Deuteronomy 32:20). “Law” is torah, which means instruction, the teaching a parent gives, the thing these children refuse to hear.

“Smooth things” is chalaqot, from the root that made Jacob “a smooth man” beside hairy Esau (Genesis 27:11), slippery talk that goes down easily. Micah 2:11 says the same of Jerusalem: a liar who prophesied “of wine and of strong drink” would be just “the prophet of this people”.

“Turn aside out of the path” is how Moses described Israel at the golden calf: “They have turned aside quickly out of the way” (Exodus 32:8). Here the people ask the prophets to do on purpose what Israel did in the wilderness, to step off the road and take the Holy One with them.

“Despise” is ma’as, the verb of 5:24, where the people “despised the word of the Holy One of Israel”. They lean on “oppression”, oshek, extortion, which some read as “crookedness” with a slight change of letters. What they refuse is the word; what they rely on is force.

Mudbrick walls fail slowly: water gets into the base, the wall bellies outward, and then the whole face comes down without warning. Psalm 62:3 uses the same image of those who attack a man, “as a bowing wall shall ye be, and as a tottering fence”. The bulge is there for anyone to see.

Broken pottery was still useful: a large sherd carried hot coals from the hearth or scooped water from a cistern, and Job sat in the ashes scraping himself with one (Job 2:8). Jeremiah 19:11 uses the same sign, smashing a jar “that cannot be made whole again”. Not even a sherd survives this break.

“Returning” is shuvah, the root of Shear-jashub’s name. “Quietness” is the word of 7:4, “Take heed, and be quiet”. “Confidence” is bitchah, trust, from the root that the Rabshakeh hammers at Jerusalem’s walls in 36:4, “What confidence is this wherein thou trustest?”

The Hebrew plays twice: “we will flee”, nanus, “therefore shall ye flee”, tenusun; “the swift”, qal, “shall be swift”, yiqqallu. Deuteronomy 17:16 had warned the king not to “multiply horses” nor “cause the people to return to Egypt”. Horses were what Egypt sold, and Judah wants both.

The law had promised the reverse: “How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight” (Deuteronomy 32:30), and “five of you shall chase an hundred” (Leviticus 26:8). Here one enemy scatters a thousand. A “beacon” is a pole or mast on a hilltop, the one thing left standing on a bare summit.

“Will be exalted” can be read “will rise up” or “will hold himself back” while he waits. “Blessed” is ashre, the word that opens the Psalter, “Blessed is the man” (Psalm 1:1). The same Hebrew verb, chakah, is used both for God waiting and for those who wait for him.

The address turns to singular, to Zion as one person. “At the voice of thy cry” recalls the law’s promise for the widow and fatherless: “if they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry” (Exodus 22:23). The book makes the same promise in 65:19, “the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her”.

“Bread of adversity” and “water of affliction” are prison rations; Ahab ordered Micaiah fed “with bread of affliction and with water of affliction” (1 Kings 22:27). “Teachers” can be read as singular, “thy Teacher”, meaning God himself, who will no longer hide himself away.

The voice comes from behind, as a shepherd walks behind the flock to keep it on the track. Deuteronomy 5:32 used the same pair of directions: “ye shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left.” The guidance is given exactly at the moment of swerving.

Idols were usually wooden cores plated with thin sheets of metal, as 40:19 describes, the goldsmith who “spreadeth it over with gold”. The “menstruous cloth” is the cloth that made a woman ritually unclean under Leviticus 15. “Get thee hence” is one Hebrew word, “Out!”

The rain “of thy seed” is the early rain of autumn that softened the ground for sowing, the first of the two rains Deuteronomy 11:14 promises. “Fat and plenteous” is the language of richness, oily and full. The cattle, once crowded by war, spread across wide meadows.

“Clean provender” is literally “salted fodder”, feed seasoned with salt or sorrel, the kind given to prized animals, a luxury for draught beasts. The shovel and fan are the two winnowing tools: a fork to toss the threshed grain into the wind and a shovel to turn the heap.

“Rivers” is peleg, the word for irrigation channels, the “rivers of water” where the righteous man is planted in Psalm 1:3. Water normally runs down from hills; here it runs on the very summits. The day it flows is also a day of slaughter and falling towers, and the verse keeps the two together.

The moon and sun are again the poetic levanah and chammah, “the white” and “the hot”. In 24:23 they were put to shame by the LORD’s glory; here they are made brighter. “Sevenfold” is the number of fullness, all seven days’ light gathered into one.

“The name of the LORD” approaches as if it were a person, as with the angel of Exodus 23:21, of whom God says “my name is in him”. “The burden thereof is heavy” may mean “heavy is its rising”, a thick column of smoke going up from a burning land.

“The sieve of vanity” is a sieve of destruction, one that keeps back nothing worth keeping. The bridle in the jaws of the nations becomes personal in 37:29, where the LORD tells Sennacherib, “I will put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips.”

The Passover was the one festival kept at night, “a night to be much observed” (Exodus 12:42). Pilgrims went up to the house of God “with the voice of joy and praise” (Psalm 42:4), and the pipe set the pace. “The mighty One of Israel” is literally “the Rock of Israel”, the King James softening the metaphor to a title.

“The lighting down of his arm” is the arm coming down in a blow. “Scattering” is nephets, a cloudburst that smashes. The storm with hailstones is the one of Psalm 18:12-14, where God “sent out his arrows” amid “hail stones and coals of fire”. The voice comes first, then the arm.

“Beaten down” is from the root chatat, to shatter, the verb used of Ephraim “broken” in 7:8 and of the nations in 8:9. The last clause can also be read “he will smite with the rod”: the Assyrian who held the rod of 10:5 is now under the LORD’s rod.

The “grounded staff” is literally “the rod of foundation”, appointed; some Hebrew manuscripts read “the rod of his discipline”. Every blow lands to the beat of drums and harps, like the singers who marched ahead of Jehoshaphat’s army and sang while the enemy destroyed itself (2 Chronicles 20:21-22).

Tophet was the burning place in the valley of Hinnom where children were sacrificed to Molech (2 Kings 23:10; Jeremiah 7:31). “For the king” is lammelekh, and the same consonants spell “for Molech”, so the pit built for Molech’s victims receives the king of Assyria. Brimstone is burning sulphur, as at Sodom (Genesis 19:24).