Isaiah 31:3
Now the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses flesh, and not spirit. When the Lord shall stretch out his hand, both he that helpeth shall fall, and he that is holpen shall fall down, and they all shall fail together.
Study Note
Study Note
The declaration 'the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses flesh, and not spirit' establishes one of the Hebrew Bible's fundamental distinctions — the gap between created power (flesh) and divine power (spirit) — as the basis for rejecting political-military alliances that substitute earthly resources for covenant trust. The context is Judah's negotiations with Egypt for military support against Assyria, which Isaiah consistently condemns as a failure of the prophetic imagination: refusing to let God's power be sufficient. The word-pair 'flesh/spirit' (basar/ruach) is Isaiah's characteristic way of marking the ontological difference between the contingent and the eternal, applied here to geopolitical analysis. Paul deploys the same contrast in Romans 8:4-9 and Galatians 6:8 to describe the difference between two modes of human existence — giving the Isaiah dialectic a New Testament pneumatological application.
Other Translations
Now the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses flesh, and not spirit: and when Jehovah shall stretch out his hand, both he that helpeth shall stumble, and he that is helped shall fall, and they all shall be consumed together.
And the Egyptians <FI>are men<Fi> , and not God, And their horses <FI>are<Fi> flesh, and not spirit, And Jehovah stretcheth out His hand, And stumbled hath the helper, And fallen hath the helped one, And together all of them are consumed.
For the Egyptians are men, and not God; and their horses are flesh, and not spirit: and when the Lord's hand is stretched out, the helper and he who is helped will come down together.
Cross References
How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and …
For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges.
Put them in fear, O Lord: that the nations may know themselves to be but men. Selah.
An horse is a vain thing for safety: neither shall he deliver any by his great strength.
Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help.
Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the Lord his God:
Therefore the Lord shall have no joy in their young men, neither shall have mercy on their fatherless and widows: …
They were all ashamed of a people that could not profit them, nor be an help nor profit, but a …
For the Egyptians shall help in vain, and to no purpose: therefore have I cried concerning this, Their strength is …
Lo, thou trustest in the staff of this broken reed, on Egypt; whereon if a man lean, it will go …