I have dug, and drunk water; and with the soles of my feet have I dried up all the streams of Egypt.
All Commentaries on Isaiah 37:25 Go To Isaiah 37
Jerome
AD 420
Because Hezekiah prayed to the Lord so boldly and did not send for Isaiah, as he had done previously, the prophet did not visit him in person but sent messengers who spoke to him the words of God: “This is the sentence of the Lord on Sennacherib, against whom you prayed: the virgin of Zion and daughter of Jerusalem”—who is called virgin and daughter because, with all the other nations worshiping the idols of dead men, she alone preserved the purity of the religion of God and the worship of one divinity—“has mocked and despised you. And lest she provoke you to greater blasphemy, she did not respond in your presence, but wagged her head behind you, immune from vengeance, secure from punishment. She also said this: ‘It is not against me that you have rebelled but against the Lord. Nor did you do it yourself, but through your servants, that the arrogance of your blasphemy might be greater. For you said that with the multitude of your chariots you would ascend the heights of the mountains and the yokes of Lebanon, and that you would fell the highest of its cedars and firs.’ ” We should read this metaphorically as concerning all the Gentiles and their princes, or as concerning Jerusalem, which Lebanon represents, such that we would refer her cedars and firs to the rulers and aristocrats but the height of her summit and the forest of her Carmel to the temple. For he had said above: “Have you not heard what the kings of Assyria did to all the earth, destroying it? Therefore, neither can you be liberated.” And because he adds: “I dug a well and drank water and dried up with my footsteps all the rivers of Egypt,” it can be understood in accordance with history that all the streams ran dry before the multitude of the army, thus making it necessary to dig wells. This means that by means of his army he destroyed all the peoples, who are sometimes known under the name of “waters,” as only the Seventy translated: “And I made a bridge and I turned the desert into waters and all the congregations of the waters.” None of the nations were impassable to themselves, of course, but he trampled with his foot on all the waters of the people.
