(12) Make the rivers dry--i.e., the canals of Egypt, by which the land was irrigated, and on which its fertility depended. It may also include the comparative drying, the lessening of the inundation of the Nile, which occurred from time to time, and was the cause of the various famines in Egypt mentioned in Scripture.

Verse 12. - I will make the rivers dry. The rivers are the Nile-blanches of the Delta, and their being dried up points, perhaps, literally to a failure in the inundation of the Nile on which its fertility depended; figuratively to a like failure of all its sources of prosperity.

30:1-19 The prophecy of the destruction of Egypt is very full. Those who take their lot with God's enemies, shall be with them in punishment. The king of Babylon and his army shall be instruments of this destruction. God often makes one wicked man a scourge to another. No place in the land of Egypt shall escape the fury of the Chaldeans. The Lord is known by the judgments he executes. Yet these are only present effects of the Divine displeasure, not worthy of our fear, compared with the wrath to come, from which Jesus delivers his people.And I will make the rivers dry,.... Egypt was a country that abounded with rivers; however, with canals cut from the river Nile; its wealth and riches very much depended here on, partly on account of the multitude of fishes taken out of them, and the paper reeds that grew upon their banks; but chiefly because the whole land, was watered by them, and made exceeding fruitful, rain being not so common in it; so that to dry up the riven was in effect to take away their substance and dependence; besides, hereby the way was made easy and passable for the enemy; there was nothing to obstruct him, he could overrun and ravage the land at pleasure:

and sell the land into the hand of the wicked; the Chaldeans under Nebuchadnezzar, who were wicked idolaters, men of flagitious lives, and of merciless and cruel dispositions; who would show no favour to the inhabitants of the land, when delivered up to them, which is called a selling it; for, as things sold are delivered to the buyer, so should this land be to them; which though they had no right to it before, yet by the event of war, and disposal of divine Providence, came to have a property in it, given them by him who is the proprietor of all lands; and after them into the hands of the Persians, under Cambyses, and Ochus; who were very wicked and cruel princes, and may be reckoned among the terrible or violent ones of the nations in the preceding verse; and then into the hands of the Grecian, Romans, Saracen, Mamaluck, and now the Turks, all very wicked people:

and I will make the land waste, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers; the Babylonians, people of another country and distant, of another language, and with whom they had no commerce, alliance, and friendship, and so would not spare them, and their land, when in their possession; and so all the rest above mentioned, into whose hands they successively fell:

I the Lord have spoken it; determined it, prophesied of it; and it shall come to pass, as it did accordingly.