Isaiah 19:18

The verse may mean either (1) that an indefinite, but small, number of Egyptian cities shall be converted to the worship of Jehovah and adopt Hebrew as at least their sacred language; or (2) that at a certain epoch there shall be five (and no more) Jewish colonies in Egypt maintaining their national language and religion. On the former view "five" is a round number (as in ch. Isaiah 30:17; Genesis 43:34; Lev 26:8; 1 Samuel 17:40; 1 Samuel 21:3; 2 Kings 7:13), and the verse is a prophecy of the first beginnings of the conversion of Egypt a "day of small things." This interpretation, although grammatically defensible, is not natural. No parallel can be found in Isaiah's writings to the anticipation of a gradual dissemination of the true religion by sporadic conversions. He always treats the nations as units, and it is very questionable if the idea of a religious schism within the Egyptian nationality could have presented itself to him or his contemporaries as a desirable thing, or a realisation of the Messianic hope. If we adopt the second view the prophecy must have been written at a time when the prospect of Hebrew-speaking Jewish communes in Egypt was a natural expression of the anticipation that the influence of the Jewish religion would extend to that country. This was not the case at the very late date maintained by some critics (b.c. 160). By that time the Egyptian Jews had so completely abandoned their native tongue that a Greek translation of the Scriptures had become necessary for their use. This part of the prophecy is more intelligible at a considerably earlier period, before the universal solvent of the Greek language had begun to leaven the varied nationalities of the old world. It is of course impossible to identify the "five cities." Hitzig has attempted it by the help of Jeremiah 44:1, adding to the three towns there mentioned, Heliopolis and Leontopolis (see below).

one shall be called, The city of destruction The exegesis of this clause is complicated by a diversity of text. (α) The received text has -îr hahereṣ, which in Hebrew can only mean "the city of Destruction." The insurmountable objection to this reading is that it is inconsistent with the favourable general sense of the verse; for the translation "city of [the] destruction of idolatry, &c." is quite unwarranted. Some, however, explain the word by haris, an Arabic epithet of the lion, rendering, "city of the Lion," i.e. Leontopolis, where the Jewish Temple was built. This might be intelligible as a correctionof the reading to be next mentioned; hardly as an independent text. Moreover, the Greek translator of Isaiah knew nothing of it, but followed an entirely different reading (γ below). (β) Another reading, found in some Hebrew MSS. and followed by the Vulg., is -îr haḥeres, "city of the Sun," i.e. Heliopolis. This gives a good sense. Heliopolis, the biblical On(Genesis 41:50, &c.), might be especially mentioned because of its great importance in the religion of Egypt, as it is (under the name "house of the Sun") in Jeremiah 43:13. (γ) The LXX. reads "city of Righteousness" (-îr haççedeq). This reading, in itself the least probable of the three, is defended by some commentators as most in accordance with Isaiah's use of names as descriptive of the essential quality of the objects (cf. Isaiah 1:26; Isaiah 4:3; Isaiah 7:14; Isaiah 9:6). So here "city of righteousness" is regarded not as the proper name of any one city, but an epithet applicable to any of the five. On the whole, the suggestion of Cheyne seems as plausible as any, that the original form was ḥereṣ, and the reference was to Heliopolis; that this was altered by the Egyptian Jews to çedeqand by those of Palestine to hereṣ(destruction), the motive in both cases being to establish a reference (in the first case favourable, in the second unfavourable) to the temple at Leontopolis. The latter variant, however, might be due to accident.

[The Jewish Temple in Egypt was erected about 160 with the sanction of Ptolemy Philometor and his consort by Onias IV., the legitimate heir of the high-priesthood at Jerusalem. (Josephus, Ant.xiii. 3, 1 f.; Bell. Jud.vii. 10, 2 f.) It was a brilliant conception on the part of the priest, but was probably not dictated by very lofty motives. Having been ousted from his rights by the intrigues of the apostate party in Judæa, he sought by this means to retain the state and emoluments of a great ecclesiastical dignitary. His enterprise cannot have been regarded with friendly eyes by the patriotic party in Jerusalem, and afterwards when the new Temple began to divert the stream of Jewish liberality from Jerusalem, their antipathy increased. The temple was built, after the model of that at Jerusalem, on the ruins of an Egyptian temple of the lion-headed goddess Bast (hence the name Leontopolis) in the Heliopolitan nome.]