And the LORD shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea; and with his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river, and shall smite it in the seven streams, and make men go over dryshod.
There shall be a second exodus, destined to eclipse even the former one from Egypt in its wonders. So the prophecies elsewhere (Psalms 68:22; Exodus 14:22; Zechariah 10:11). The same deliverance furnishes the imagery by which the return from Babylon is described (Isaiah 48:20-21).
The Lord shall utterly destroy - literally, devote, or doom with an anathema (Hebrew, hecheriyb (H2717)), i:e., dry up; for what God dooms, perishes (Psalms 106:9; Nahum 1:4).
The tongue of the Egyptian sea - the Buborstic branch of the Nile (Vitringa); but as the Nile was not the obstruction to the exodus, it is rather the western tongue or Heroopolite fork of the Red Sea.
With his mighty wind shall he shake his hand over the river - such as the "strong east wind" (Exodus 14:21), by which God made a way for Israel through the Red Sea. The Hebrew for "mighty" means terror х `ªyaam (H5868), akin to 'aayom (H366), terrible, Habakkuk 1:7] (Cocceius). Maurer translates, 'with the terribleness of His anger' - i:e., His terrible anger; Hebrew, rucho-literally, His breath, perhaps with the additional idea of anger, as one angry breathes strongly in indignation (Exodus 15:8, "with the blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered together").
And shall smite it in the seven streams - rather, 'shall smite it (divide it by smiting) into seven (many) streams, so as to be easily crossed' (Lowth). So Cyrus divided the river Gyndes, which retarded his march against Babylon, into 360 streams, so that even a woman could cross it (Herodotus, 1: 189). "The river" is the Euphrates, the obstruction to Israel's return "from Assyria" (Isaiah 11:16), a type of all future impediments to the restoration of the Jews.
And make men go over dry-shod - Hebrew, in shoes. Even in sandals they should be able to pass over the once mighty river without being wet. Revelation 16:12 is derived from this passage: "the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared."