Egypt's Counselors Cannot Discern the Divine Purpose

Zoan's princes claim pedigree and cannot tell what the LORD has purposed

Surely the princes of Zoan are fools, the counsel of the wise counsellors of Pharaoh is become brutish: how say ye unto Pharaoh, I am the son of the wise, the son of ancient kings? Where are they? where are thy wise men? and let them tell thee now, and let them know what the LORD of hosts hath purposed upon Egypt. The princes of Zoan are become fools, the princes of Noph are deceived; they have also seduced Egypt, even they that are the stay of the tribes thereof.

Inherited wisdom cannot read the divine purpose. The unit stays an oracle on Egypt's counselors, not a slur on a living nation and not a colonial claim that foreigners must manage Egypt.

A spirit of perverseness makes Egypt stagger, and Judah becomes a terror in the poem

The LORD hath mingled a perverse spirit in the midst thereof: and they have caused Egypt to err in every work thereof, as a drunken man staggereth in his vomit. Neither shall there be any work for Egypt, which the head or tail, branch or rush, may do. In that day shall Egypt be like unto women: and it shall be afraid and fear because of the shaking of the hand of the LORD of hosts, which he shaketh over it. And the land of Judah shall be a terror unto Egypt, every one that maketh mention thereof shall be afraid in himself, because of the counsel of the LORD of hosts, which he hath determined against it.

Staggering worklessness and fear of Judah reverse the usual imperial direction. Gendered fear language is the poem's shame of counselors, not a warrant to despise women or to make a modern Judah-policy of terror. Do not map this fear onto present states.