What does Isaiah 19:24 mean?
God's relationship with Israel as a nation began with the promise of blessing to Abraham's descendants. This benefit would extend all peoples of the world through Abraham's lineage:"Now the Lord said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed'" (Genesis 12:1–3).
Isaiah has been looking towards a future when this promise will be fully realized. Tiny Israel will stand together in a set of three nations. There will be powerful, self-reliant Egypt on one side and the unstoppable killing machine of Assyria on the other. Yet in this future era, likely the Messiah's reign on earth (Isaiah 2:1–5; Revelation 20:1–4), the three nations together will be called a blessing to the world.
The picture being painted suggests two things that would have sounded impossible to those of Isaiah's day. First, how could Israel ever stand as equal to either Egypt or Assyria? The northern ten tribes had been wiped out and scattered. The remaining two tribes of Judah stood repeatedly on the brink of destruction. Who could imagine them being mentioned in the same breath as the major power players of the earth ever again?
Second, no one in Israel would have thought of either Egypt or Assyria as a blessing. These nations didn't become empires through kindness or charity. They controlled and dominated, especially in the ancient Near East. Assyria was particularly infamous for cruelty and savage violence against their enemies. As Isaiah makes clear in the following verse, such transformation will only be possible because the Lord deems it so.
