This word of Jehovah was to be proclaimed in Egypt, and especially in the frontier cities, which would have to bear the first brunt of invasion:--
"Declare in Egypt, proclaim in Migdol, proclaim in Noph and Tahpanhes: Say ye, Take thy stand and be ready, for the sword hath devoured round about thee. Why hath Apis[203] fled and thy calf not stood? Because Jehovah overthrew it."
Memphis was devoted to the worship of Apis, incarnate in the sacred bull; but now Apis must succumb to the mightier divinity of Jehovah, and his sacred city become a prey to the invaders.
"He maketh many to stumble; they fall one against another. Then they say, Arise, and let us return to our own people and to our native land, before the oppressing sword."
We must remember that the Egyptian armies were largely composed of foreign mercenaries. In the hour of disaster and defeat these hirelings would desert their employers and go home.
"Give unto Pharaoh king of Egypt the name[204] Crash; he hath let the appointed time pass by."
The form of this enigmatic sentence is probably due to a play upon Egyptian names and titles. When the allusions are forgotten, such paronomasia naturally results in hopeless obscurity. The "appointed time" has been explained as the period during which Jehovah gave Pharaoh the opportunity of repentance, or as that within which he might have submitted to Nebuchadnezzar on favourable terms.
"As I live, is the utterance of the King, whose name is Jehovah Sabaoth, One shall come like Tabor among the mountains and like Carmel by the sea."
It was not necessary to name this terrible invader; it could be no other than Nebuchadnezzar.
"Get thee gear for captivity, O daughter of Egypt, that dwellest in thine own land: For Noph shall become a desolation, and shall be burnt up and left without inhabitants. Egypt is a very fair heifer, but destruction is come upon her from the north."
This tempest shattered the Greek phalanx in which Pharaoh trusted:--
"Even her mercenaries in the midst of her are like calves of the stall; Even they have turned and fled together, they have not stood: For their day of calamity hath come upon them, their day of reckoning."
We do not look for chronological sequence in such a poem, so that this picture of the flight and destruction of the mercenaries is not necessarily later in time than their overthrow and contemplated desertion in verse 15. The prophet is depicting a scene of bewildered confusion; the disasters that fell thick upon Egypt crowd into his vision without order or even coherence. Now he turns again to Egypt herself:--
"Her voice goeth forth like the (low hissing of) the serpent; For they come upon her with a mighty army, and with axes like woodcutters."
A like fate is predicted in Isaiah xxix. 4 for "Ariel, the city where David dwelt":--
"Thou shalt be brought low and speak from the ground; Thou shalt speak with a low voice out of the dust; Thy voice shall come from the ground, like that of a familiar spirit, And thou shalt speak in a whisper from the dust."
Thus too Egypt would seek to writhe herself from under the heel of the invader; hissing out the while her impotent fury, she would seek to glide away into some safe refuge amongst the underwood. Her dominions, stretching far up the Nile, were surely vast enough to afford her shelter somewhere; but no! the "woodcutters" are too many and too mighty for her:--
"They cut down her forest--it is the utterance of Jehovah--for it is impenetrable; For they are more than the locusts, and are innumerable."
The whole of Egypt is overrun and subjugated; no district holds out against the invader, and remains unsubjugated to form the nucleus of a new and independent empire.
"The daughter of Egypt is put to shame; she is delivered into the hand of the northern people."