Canter Bridge

We’ve considered the sudden turning in Isaiah’s nineteenth chapter from a bleak oracle of judgement against Egypt to a declaration about her healing and indeed her unlikely integration into Yahwistic faith. Some would categorize the ambiguous vignette at verses 16-17 with the preceding doom oracle against that nation. I’ve argued on the basis of the overwhelming note of blessing in the five oracles and the precisely repeated introductory clause ביום ההוא (‘In that day…’) that those two verses are best understood as a first of five oracles of blessing rather than a dismal prelude to them.

When we come to the chapter’s second declaration of good fortune for Egypt, the sunnier disposition of the oracle occasions relatively less doubt. I understand it to be the second of five parallel oracles of blessing.

On that day there will be five cities in the land of Egypt that speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the LORD of hosts. One of these will be called the City of the Sun.

Isaiah 19:18 (NRSV)

Curiously, there is a crescendoing of the element of blessing from the first of the five oracles—where it is seen only through the prism of the happier declarations that follow it—to the fifth and culminating vision. In that culminating version of events, not only Egypt but also Assyria will be placed before Israel as nations that are the beneficiaries of YHWH’s blessing.

When verse 18 is seen in this wider context, it makes its own contribution to the gradual clarifying of Egypt’s enviable plight. Taken by itself, this second oracle of blessing might be read as conventional imperial rhetoric of an Israelite type. Those ‘five cities in the land of Egypt that speak the language of Canaan and wear allegiance to the YHWH Sebaoth’ could quite naturally be understood as settlements of occupying Israelites within Egypt.

It is only as we continue to read on into the third oracle and then the fourth and fifth that such an understand loses its viability. In the third, a deep rapprochement between Egypt and YHWH himself will become evident. If we read the oracles together—as the ביום הוא mechanism seems to suggest that we must—then these five cities are Egyptian cities peopled by Egyptian inhabitants living on Egyptian land. Yet they speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to Israel’s deity. Whether this vow is understood as an initial feature of faith by conversion or as an ongoing Yahwistic piety is almost immaterial. In either case, we view Egyptians worshiping YHWH and participating in the ongoing identity that is represented by dialect.

Elsewhere, the book called Isaiah will traffic in the language and concept of a new name and of re-naming. Here we have all of that in a different key that does not depend upon the mention of a new name but rather by reference to two activities: swearing of allegiance and language. Indeed, as we shall see, these Egyptians manifestly remain Egyptians.

Still, upon looking below the surface, one thing becomes clear: everything has changed.