They were all ashamed... — Better, are: historic present, as before. The prophet paints the dreary disappointment of the embassy. They found Egypt at once weak and false, without the will or power to help them. So Rabshakeh compares that power to a “broken reed,” which does but pierce the hand of him who leans on it. So Sargon (Smith, Assyrian Canon, p. 133, quoted by Cheyne), describing the resistance of his foes, says that they “carried presents, seeking his alliance, to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, a monarch who could not help them.”
Related Commentaries of Isaiah 30:5
Isaiah 30:5
5 They were all ashamed of a people that could not profit them, nor be an help nor profit, but a shame, and also a reproach.