Isaiah 19:5-8 The Nile Goes Dry
The waters from the sea will dry up, and the river will be parched and dry. The canals will emit a stench, the streams of Egypt will thin out and dry up; the reeds and rushes will rot away. The bulrushes by the Nile, by the edge of the Nile and all the sown fields by the Nile will become dry, be driven away, and be no more. And the fishermen will lament, and all those who cast a line into the Nile will mourn, and those who spread nets on the waters will pine away.
This prophecy was written approximately 2,800 years ago. I could not find any record where the Nile River has dried up since this was written. This prophecy is quite a statement. The Nile River will go dry. The notion of a dry Nile is also noted in Zechariah 10:11b …And He will strike the waves in the sea, so that all the depths of the Nile will dry up…
In case one really does not believe that the river could actually dry up, the grammar of verse 12 restates the fact that the river dries up three times for emphasis!
The tribulation period also speaks of a dried Euphrates River in Revelation 16:12. This time period has two of the largest rivers on the planet going dry.
Verse 6: The Hebrew word translated canal is nahar, it means rivers. When it dries out, it is going to stink. I have smelled a pond that has dried out and that is awful. I can’t imagine what the longest river in the world and its tributaries are going to smell like when it dries out. Think of all the vegetation, dead fish, and other animals…nice smell. Simply put, all the rivers, streams, and the Nile are going dry.
How is the going to happen? There is the obvious answer of drought. Outside of the Nile River, Egypt is not a hospitable place. It is desert and nothing grows there. It would take drought in central Africa in the highlands of Lake Victoria, the source of the Nile, to accomplish this.
A second answer is the Aswan Dam in southern Egypt. The waters of the dam could be withheld. Ironically, the primary purpose of the dam is to manage flooding of the Nile River. As a trend, the levels of the Nile River are receding in recent times. This is due to countries up river in central Africa who are using more of the water as a resource. As of December 2006, the following statement was issued by NASA based on satellite imagery. “Several African basins, such as the Congo, Zambezi and Nile, show significant drying over the past five years.” February 2010 headline from newspaper in Sudan read, Nile River Volume Decreases, The Problem To Local Communities.
The fact that the Nile is going to go dry is stated over and over and over in these verses. I believe God says the Nile is going to dry up.
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