Isaiah 19:6

19:6 The canals ¹  will stink; ² 

the streams of Egypt will trickle and then dry up;

the bulrushes and reeds will decay,

Isaiah 37:25

37:25 I dug wells

and drank water. ³ 

With the soles of my feet I dried up

all the rivers of Egypt.’

Isaiah 48:21

48:21 They do not thirst as he leads them through dry regions;

he makes water flow out of a rock for them;

he splits open a rock and water flows out.’ ⁴ 

[19:6]  ¹ tn Heb “rivers” (so KJV, ASV); NAB, CEV “streams”; TEV “channels.”

[19:6]  ² tn The verb form appears as a Hiphil in the Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a; the form in MT may be a so-called “mixed form,” reflecting the Hebrew Hiphil stem and the functionally corresponding Aramaic Aphel stem. See HALOT 276 s.v. I זנח.

[37:25]  ³ tc The Hebrew text has simply, “I dug and drank water.” But the parallel text in 2 Kgs 19:24 has “foreign waters.” זָרִים (zarim, “foreign”) may have accidentally dropped out of the Isaianic text by homoioteleuton (cf. NCV, NIV, NLT). Note that the preceding word, מַיִם (mayim, “water) also ends in mem (ם). The Qumran scroll 1QIsa^a has “foreign waters” for this line. However, in several other passages the 1QIsa^a scroll harmonizes with 2 Kgs 19 against the MT (Isa 36:5; 37:9, 20). Since the addition of “foreign” to this text in Isaiah by a later scribe would be more likely than its deletion, the MT reading should be accepted.

[48:21]  ⁵ sn The translation above (present tense) assumes that this verse describes God’s provision for returning Babylonian exiles (see v. 20; 35:6; 49:10) in terms reminiscent of the Exodus from Egypt (see Exod 17:6).