Isaiah 19:15

Neither shall there be any work for Egypt, which the head or tail, branch or rush, may do.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(15) The head or tail, branch or rush.—For this figurative description of all classes of the people, see Note on Isaiah 9:14.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

19:1-17 God shall come into Egypt with his judgments. He will raise up the causes of their destruction from among themselves. When ungodly men escape danger, they are apt to think themselves secure; but evil pursues sinners, and will speedily overtake them, except they repent. The Egyptians will be given over into the hand of one who shall rule them with rigour, as was shortly after fulfilled. The Egyptians were renowned for wisdom and science; yet the Lord would give them up to their own perverse schemes, and to quarrel, till their land would be brought by their contests to become an object of contempt and pity. He renders sinners afraid of those whom they have despised and oppressed; and the Lord of hosts will make the workers of iniquity a terror to themselves, and to each other; and every object around a terror to them.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Neither shall there be any work - The sense is, that there shall be such discord that no man, whether a prince, a politician, or a priest, shall be able to give any advice, or form any plan for the national safety and security, which shall be successful.

Which the head or tail - High or low; strong or weak: those in office and those out of office; all shall be dispirited and confounded. Rosenmuller understands by the head here, the "political" orders of the nation, and by the tail the "sacerdotal" ranks. But the meaning more probably is, the highest and the lowest ranks - all the politicians, and priests, and princes, on the one hand, as the prophet had just stated Isaiah 19:11-15; and all the artificers, fishermen, etc., on the other, as he had stated Isaiah 19:8-10. This verse, therefore, is a "summing up" of all he had said about the calamities that were coming upon them.

Branch or rush - See these words explained in the note at Isaiah 9:14.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

15. work for Egypt—nothing which Egypt can do to extricate itself from the difficulty.

head or tail—high or low (Isa 19:11-15, and Isa 19:8-10).

branch or rush—the lofty palm branch or the humble reed (Isa 9:14, 15; 10:33, 34).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

All people, both high and low, shall be at their wits’ end not knowing what to do.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Neither shall there be any work for Egypt,.... No trade or business to carry on; their rivers being dried up, there was no flax to work with, and fine linen was a principal commodity of Egypt; nor any fish to catch, or rushes to make paper of, as before observed: or it would not be in the power of their hands to deliver themselves from the Assyrians that should come against them; and that they should be deprived of wisdom and counsel, and be at their wits' end, not knowing what to do, or what step to take:

which the head or tail, branch or rush, may do: high or low, strong or weak, all ranks and orders of men shall have nothing to do; all shall be weak and dispirited, and void of counsel. By the "head" and "branch" may be meant the king and his nobles; and by the "tail" and "rush" the common people; see Isaiah 9:14. The Targum interprets the whole of their chief men thus,

"and the Egyptians shall have no king to reign, nor prince, noble, governor, or ruler.''

Jarchi explains it of the magicians, astrologers, and stargazers of Egypt, who, with all their boasted knowledge and wisdom, should not be able either to foresee or prevent the evil coming upon them.

Geneva Study Bible

Neither shall there be any work for Egypt, which the head or tail, branch or rush, may {o} perform.

(o) Neither the great or the small, the strong or the weak.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

15. No concerted action is possible, and every proposal that is brought forward falls to the ground.

head and tail, palm-branch and rush, exactly as in ch. Isaiah 9:14.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 15. - Neither shall there be, etc. Translate, And there shall be for Egypt no work in which both the head and the tail, both the palm branch and the rush, may (conjointly) work. The general spirit of perverseness shall prevent all union of high with low, rich with poor. Isaiah 19:15

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

In Isaiah 19:14 and Isaiah 19:15 this state of confusion is more minutely described: "Jehovah hath poured a spirit of giddiness into the heart of Egypt, so that they have led Egypt astray in all its doing, as a drunken man wandereth about in his vomit. And there does not occur of Egypt any work, which worked, of head and tail, palm-branch and rush." The spirit which God pours out (as it also said elsewhere) is not only a spirit of salvation, but also a spirit of judgment. The judicial, penal result which He produces is here called עועים, which is formed from עועו (root עו, to curve), and is either contracted from עועוים, or points back to a supposed singular עועה (vid., Ewald, 158, b). The suffix in b'kribâh points to Egypt. The divine spirit of judgment makes use of the imaginary wisdom of the priestly caste, and thereby plunges the people, as it were, into the giddiness of intoxication. The prophet employs the hiphil התעה to denote the carefully considered actions of the leaders of the nation, and the niphal נתעה to denote the constrained actions of a drunken man, who has lost all self-control. The nation has been so perverted by false counsels and hopes, that it lies there like a drunken man in his own vomit, and gropes and rolls about, without being able to find any way of escape. "No work that worked," i.e., that averted trouble (עשׂה is as emphatic as in Daniel 8:24), was successfully carried out by any one, either by the leaders of the nation or by the common people and their flatterers, either by the upper classes or by the mob.