Note 2 — ISAIAH. (continued 6)

The Euphrates, i.e., the good and abounding river. The Euphrates is the largest, the longest, and by far the most important of the rivers of Western Asia. It rises from two chief sources in the Armenian mountains . . . they meet at Kebben-Maten, nearly in the long. 39° E. from Greenwich, having run respectively 400 and 270 miles. Here the stream formed by their combined waters is 120 yards wide, rapid and very deep. . . . The entire course is calculated at 1760 miles, nearly 650 more than that of the Tigris, and only 200 short of that of the Indus; and of this distance more than two-thirds (1200 miles) is navigable for boats, and even, as the expedition of Colonel Chesney proved, for small steamers. The width of the river is greatest at the distance of 700 or 800 miles from its mouth, that is to say, from its junction with the Khabour to the village of Werai. It there averages 400 yards. . . . The annual inundation of the Euphrates is caused by the melting of the snows in the Armenian highlands. It occurs in the month of May. . . . The Tigris scarcely ever overflows, but the Euphrates inundates large tracts on both sides of its course from Hît downwards.—Rawlinson.

Considered in a commercial respect, as well as with regard to its uses in agriculture, the Euphrates manifestly stood in the same relation to Babylon and the surrounding region that the Nile did to Egypt; it was the source, to a large extent, of its prosperity, and the most important element of its greatness. It is in this relation that the symbolical use of the Euphrates in Scripture proceeds, and by keeping it in view the several passages will be found to admit to an easy explanation. Contributing so materially to the resources and wealth of Babylon, the river was naturally taken for an emblem or representative of the city itself, and of the empire of which it was the capital. In this respect a striking application is made of it by the prophet Isaiah (chap. viii. 5–8), where the little kingdom of Judah, with its circumscribed territory and its few earthly resources, on the one hand is seen imaged in the tiny brooklet of Shiloah; while, on the other, the rising power of Babylon is spoken of under the emblem of “the waters of the river, strong and many, even the King of Assyria and all his glory.” And he goes on to expose the folly of Israel’s [Judah’s] trusting in this foreign power on account of its material greatness, by declaring that in consequence of this mistaken trust, and in chastisement of it, the mighty stream would, as it were, desert its proper channel, and turn its waters in a sweeping and desolating flood over the Holy Land.—Fairbairn.