Bible Strands
Isaiah 19:10
The workers in cloth will be dejected, and all the hired workers will be sick at heart.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — The prophet delivers an oracle of judgment against Egypt, detailing the collapse of the nation’s textile industry and economic labor force. This declaration follows the description of flax workers turning pale and precedes the condemnation of Pharaoh’s advisors as fools.
The words — שָׁתוֹתֶיהָ (shatoteha) translates to “its foundations,” and מְדֻכָּאִים (medukka'im) means “crushed.” Together they describe the structural ruin of the local linen industry.
The thread — The imagery of water turning to bogs and laborers facing ruin echoes the earlier plagues where the Nile’s life-giving waters were struck (Exodus 7:19; Exodus 8:5). It also recalls the contrast between Egypt’s irrigation-dependent agriculture and the rain-dependent land of Canaan (Deuteronomy 11:10).
Why it lands — The text declares that economic stability and skilled labor in Egypt will be systematically dismantled as a direct result of divine judgment. It requires the reader to recognize that human industry and political wisdom cannot withstand God’s sovereign intervention.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And they shall be broken in the purposes thereof, all that make sluices and ponds for fish.
Cross-references
- Exodus 8:5 And the LORD said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Stretch out your hand with your staff over the rivers and canals and ponds, and cause the frogs to come up onto the land of Egypt.’”
- Exodus 7:19 And the LORD said to Moses, “Tell Aaron, ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt—over their rivers and canals and ponds and all the reservoirs—that they may become blood.’ There will be blood throughout the land of Egypt, even in the vessels of wood and stone.”
- Deuteronomy 11:10 For the land that you are entering to possess is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and irrigated on foot, like a vegetable garden.