Isaiah 19:9-15

The Message

^5-10 The River Nile will dry up,
    the riverbed baked dry in the sun.
The canals will become stagnant and stink,
    every stream touching the Nile dry up.
River vegetation will rot away
    the banks of the Nile-baked clay,
The riverbed hard and smooth,
    river grasses dried up and gone with the wind.
Fishermen will complain
    that the fishing’s been ruined.
Textile workers will be out of work, all weavers
    and workers in linen and cotton and wool
Dispirited, depressed in their forced idleness—
    everyone who works for a living, jobless.

^11-15 The princes of Zoan are fools,
    the advisors of Pharaoh stupid.
How could any of you dare tell Pharaoh,
    “Trust me: I’m wise. I know what’s going on.
    Why, I’m descended from the old wisdom of Egypt”?
There’s not a wise man or woman left in the country.
    If there were, one of them would tell you
    what God-of-the-Angel-Armies has in mind for Egypt.
As it is, the princes of Zoan are all fools
    and the princes of Memphis, idiots.
The honored pillars of your society
    have led Egypt into detours and dead ends.
God has scrambled their brains,
    Egypt’s become a falling-down-in-his-own-vomit drunk.
Egypt’s hopeless, past helping,
    a senile, doddering old fool.