Online Bible 1995 March/ROM-1025.iso/olb/gill/5_100_p.lzh/5_108.TXT

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which being dried up, as in the next clause, could not
.empty themselves into the sea, as they used, and
therefore very properly may be said to fail from it;
nay, the Nile itself may be 'called a sea, it being so
large a confluence of water: and the river shall be
wasted and dried up '; that is, the river Nile, which was
not only very useful for their trade and navigation,
but the fruitfulness of the country depended upon it;
for the want of rain, in the !and of Egypt, was sup-
plied by the overflow of this river, at certain timeS,
which brought and left such a slime upon the earth,
as made it exceeding fertile; now the drying up of
this river was either occasioned by some great drought,
which God in judgment sent; or by the practices of
some of their princes with this river, by which it was
greatly impaired, and its usefulness diminished.
Ver. 6. And they shall turn the rivers far away, &c.]
The river Nile, called rivers, the plural for the singu-
lar, because of the abundance of water in it; or its
seven streams, with other rivulets, derived from it.
Some make the they here to refer to the kings of
Egypt, and interpret the words of some projects of
theirs, by which the course of the river was turned to
great disadvantage; particularly they understand it of
the twelve tyrants that reigned after Sethon, to whom
they ascribe the digging of the vast lake of Moeris,
the two pyramids built in the midst of it, and a laby-
rinth near it, though only the labyrinth was made by
them {b}; and as for the lake, it was made by Moeris, a
king of Egypt, from whom it had its name, some
hundred years before; and, besides, was of service,
and not disservice, to the Nile; for it received its
waters when it overflowed too much, and it furnished
it with water by an outlet when it failed: rather there-
fore this passage may be illustrated by the attempt
which Necus, the son of Psammiticus, whom the Scrip=
ture calls Pharaoh-necho, made, to join the Nile and the
Red sea together, by making a canal from the one to the
other; in which work he lost a hundred and twenty
thousand men, and desisted from it without finishing
it {}; but it is thought hereby the river was greatly weak-
ened: and the brooks of defence shall be emptied and
dried up; as the river of Nile and its streams were the
defence of the land of Egypt, as well as made for the
fruitfulness of it, for these must make it less accessible
to a foreign enemy; and besides, here lay their ship-
ping, which were their protection; and moreover,
from hence brooks and courts of water might be de-
'rived and carried about their fortided citieS, which
added to the strength of them. The Targum renders
it deep brooks or rivers; and Kimchi interprets it
the brooks of Egypt, taking Matzor to signify Egypt,
a word in sound near to Mitzraim, the common
word used for Egypt. It looks, by this and other expres-
sions in the context, as if more were designed than the
above instance or instances will accountfor: the reeds
and flags shall wither; which grew in the brooks, and
near them; and therefore much more the grass and
corn, and other trees, which were at a distance; be=
sides, these are mentioned, bemuse of the great use-
fulnesS they were of; for of these they made ships,
barks, and boats, and mats for bedding, and nets
fishing; as also paper to write on, as follows, and
which was a staple commodity with them; see the
note on ch. xviii. 2.
Ver. 7. The paper-reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of
the brooks, &c.] Not at the fountain or origin of the
Nile and its streams, but by the sides thereof; on the
banks of which grew a reed or rush, called by the
Greeks papyrus and bibIns; from whence come the
words paper and bible, or book, of which paper was
anciently made; even as early as the times of Isaiah,
and so, many hundreds of years before the times of
Alexander the great, to which some fix the era of
making it. "Accor,ding to Plinya, its root is of the
"thickness of a man s arm, and ten cubits long; from
"this arise a great number of triangular stalks, six or
"seven cubits high, each thick enough to be easily
"spanned. Its leaves are long, like those of the bul-
"rush; its flowers stamineous, ranged in clusters at
"the extremities of the stalks; its roots woody and
"knotty, like those of rushes; and its taste and
"smell near akin to those of the cyperus.--The man-
"ner of making the Egyptian paper was this: they
"began with lopping off' the two extremes of the
"papyrus, viz. the head and root, as of no use in this
"manufacture; the remaining stem they slit length-
"wise, into equal parts; and from each of these they
"stripped the thin scaly coats, or pe!licles, whereof it
"was composed, with a point of a penknife (or needle,
"as some}; the innermost of these pellicles were
"looked on as the best, and those nearest the rind or
"bark the worst; they were kept apart accordingly,
"and constituted different sorts of paper. As the
"pellicles were taken off, they extended them on a
"table; then two or more of them were laid over
"each other transversely, so as that their fibres made
"right angles; in this state they were glued together
"by the muddy waters of the Nilus. These being
"next pressed to get out the water, then dried, and
"lastly flatted and smoothed, by beating them with a
"mallet, constituted paper; which they sometimes
"polished further, by rubbing it with a hemisphere
"of glass, or the like. There were paper-manufactures
"in divers cities of Egypt; 'but the greatest and most
"celebrated was that at Alexandria, where, accord-
"ing to Varro's account, paper was first made. The.
"trade and consumption of this commodity were in
"reality incredible. Vopiscus relates, that the ty-
"rant Firmus, who rebelled in Egypt, publicly de=
"clared he would maintain an army only, papyro
"glutine, with paper and glue {c}.'' So that the wither-
ing and drying up of these paper-reeds, here threatened,
must be a great calamity upon the nation. And, besides
paper, of this rush or reed were made sails, ropes, and
other naval rigging, as also mats, blankets, clothes,
and even ships were made of the stalk of the papyrus;
and the Egyptian priests wore shoes made of it {f}. It
may be observed, that paper was made of the pelli=
cles or little skins stripped off of the inside Of the stem

{b} Herodot. I. 2.c. 148,149.
{c} lb. c. 158.
{d} Nat Hist. I, 13. c. 11.
{e} Chambers's Cyclopaedia, in the word Paper.
{f} Herodot, Euterpe, sive 1.2. c. 37.