I have digged and drunk strange waters. — Scarcity of water has hitherto been no bar to my advance. In foreign and hostile lands, where the fountains and cisterns have been stopped and covered in (2 Chronicles 32:3), I have digged new wells.
And with the sole ... places. — Rather, and I will dry up with the sole of my feet all the Nile arms of Mâçôr — i.e., Lower Egypt. (Comp. Isaiah 19:5 seq.) Neither mountains nor rivers avail to stop my progress. As the style is poetical, perhaps it would be correct to take the perfects, which in 2 Kings 19:23-24 alternate with imperfects, in a future sense: “I — I will ascend lofty mountains... I will dig and drink strange waters” the latter in the arid desert that lies between Egypt and Palestine (the Et-Tîh). Otherwise, both perfects and imperfects may mark what is habitual: “I ascend... I dig.”