And I will set the Egyptians against the
Egyptians
Or mingle and confound them together; in which confusion they
should fall upon and destroy one another, as the Midianites did:
the phrase is expressive of rebellions and civil wars, as the
following words explain it; and which show, that the calamities
of Egypt should be brought upon them, not by means of a foreign
invasion, but by internal quarrels, and other means, which the
Lord would in judgment send among them: and they shall
fight everyone against his brother, and everyone
against his neighbour;
and destroy one another: city against city;
of which there were great numbers in Egypt; in the times of
Amasis, it is said F19, there were twenty thousand:
[and] kingdom against kingdom;
for though Egypt was but originally one kingdom, yet upon the
death of Sethon, one of its kings, who had been a priest of
Vulcan, there being no successor, twelve of the nobility started
up, and set up themselves as kings, and divided the kingdom into
twelve parts F20, and reigned in confederacy, for
the space of fifteen years; when, falling out among themselves,
they excluded Psammiticus, one of the twelve, from any share of
government; who gathering an army together, fought with and
conquered the other eleven, and seized the whole kingdom to
himself, and who seems afterwards regarded in this prophecy; all
this happened in the times of Manasseh king of Judah, and so in
or quickly after Isaiah's time: though some understand this of
the civil wars between Apries and Amasis, in the times of
Nebuchadnezzar. The Septuagint version renders the phrase here,
"nome against nome"; for the whole land of Egypt, by Sesostris,
one of its kings, was divided into thirty six F21 nomes,
districts, or provinces, whose names are given by Herodotus
F23, Pliny {x}, and others; for so the
words of that version should be rendered, and not as they are by
the Latin interpreter, and in the Arabic version, which follows
it, "law upon law".