In the tenth year, in the tenth month, on the twelfth day of the month, Yahweh’s word came to me, saying,
Parallel Translations
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In the tenth year, in the tenth month, on the twelfth day of the month, Yahweh’s word came to me, saying,
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In the tenth year, in the tenth month, in the twelfth day of the month, the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
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In the tenth year, in the tenth month, in the twelfth day of the month, the word of the LORD came unto me, saying:
Cross-references (6)
Passages linked to Ezekiel 29:1 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Ezekiel 26:1 In the eleventh year, in the first of the month, Yahweh’s word came to me, saying,
- Ezekiel 29:17 It came to pass in the twenty-seventh year, in the first month, in the first day of the month, Yahweh’s word came to me, saying,
- Ezekiel 20:1 In the seventh year, in the fifth month, the tenth day of the month, some of the elders of Israel came to inquire of Yahweh, and sat before me.
- Ezekiel 1:2 In the fifth of the month, which was the fifth year of king Jehoiachin’s captivity,
- Ezekiel 8:1 In the sixth year, in the sixth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I sat in my house, and the elders of Judah sat before me, the Lord Yahweh’s hand fell on me there.
- Ezekiel 40:1 In the twenty-fifth year of our captivity, in the beginning of the year, in the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after that the city was struck, in the same day, Yahweh’s hand was on me, and he brought me there.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
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Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain To wit, of the captivity of Jeconiah, or of…
To wit, of the captivity of Jeconiah, or of the reign of Zedekiah. Of the order of these prophecies, and how the former sometimes standeth after the latter, read Jer. 27:1.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Eze 29:1 In the tenth year, in the tenth…
Eze 29:1 In the tenth year, in the tenth [month], in the twelfth [day] of the month, the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
Ver. 1. In the tenth year.] The year before Jerusalem was taken. {Eze 24:1}
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In the tenth month.] Called "Tebeth," {Est 2:16} and it answereth to our January, saith Bede. Chronology is the eye of prophecy, as well as of history.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain The tenth year of Jeconiah’s captivity. The tenth month,…
The tenth year of Jeconiah’s captivity. The tenth month, which answers to part of our December and part of January.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain Here is, I. The date of this prophecy against…
Here is, I. The date of this prophecy against Egypt. It was in the tenth year of the captivity, and yet it is placed after the prophecy against Tyre, which was delivered in the eleventh year, because, in the accomplishment of the prophecies, the destruction of Tyre happened before the destruction of Egypt, and Nebuchadnezzar's gaining Egypt was the reward of his service against Tyre; and therefore the prophecy against Tyre is put first, that we may the better observe that. But particular notice must be taken of this, that the first prophecy against Egypt was just at the time when the king of Egypt was coming to relieve Jerusalem and raise the siege (Jer 37:5), but did not answer the expectations of the Jews from them. Note, It is good to foresee the failing of all our creature-confidences, then when we are most in temptation to depend upon them, that we may cease from man.
II. The scope of this prophecy. It is directed against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and against all Egypt, Eze 29:2. The prophecy against Tyre began with the people, and then proceeded against the prince. But this begins with the prince, because it began to have its accomplishment in the insurrections and rebellions of the people against the prince, not long after this.
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III. The prophecy itself. Pharaoh Hophrah (for so was the reigning Pharaoh surnamed) is here represented by a great dragon, or crocodile, that lies in the midst of his rivers, as Leviathan in the waters, to play therein, Eze 29:3. Nilus, the river of Egypt, was famed for crocodiles. And what is the king of Egypt, in God's account, but a great dragon, venomous and mischievous? Therefore says God, I am against thee. I am above thee; so it may be read. How high soever the princes and potentates of the earth are, there is a higher than they (Ecc 5:8), a God above them, that can control them, and, if they be tyrannical and oppressive, a God against them, that will be free to reckon with them. Observe here,
1. The pride and security of Pharaoh. He lies in the midst of his rivers, rolls himself with a great deal of satisfaction in his wealth and pleasures; and he says, My river is my own. He boasts that he is an absolute prince (his subjects are his vassals; Joseph bought them long ago, Gen 47:23), - that he is a sole prince, and has neither partner in the government nor competitor for it, - that he is out of debt (what he has is his own, and none of his neighbours have any demands upon him), - that he is independent, neither tributary nor accountable to any. Note, Worldly carnal minds please themselves with, and pride themselves in, their property, forgetting that whatever we have we have only the use of it, the property is in God. We ourselves are not our own, but his. Our tongues are not our own, Psa 12:4. Our river is not our own, for its springs are in God. The most potent prince cannot call what he has his own, for, though it be so against all the world, it is not so against God. But Pharaoh's reason for his pretensions is yet more absurd: My river is my own, for I have made it for myself. Here he usurps two of the divine prerogatives, to be the author and the end of his own being and felicity. He only that is the great Creator can say of this world, and of every thing in it, I have made it for myself. He calls his river his own because he looks not unto the Maker thereof, nor has respect unto him that fashioned it long ago, Isa 22:11. What we have we have received from God and must use for God, so that we cannot say, We made it, much less, We made it for ourselves; and why then do we boast? Note, Self is the great idol that all the world worships, in contempt of God and his sovereignty.
2. The course God will take with this proud man, to humble him. He is a great dragon in the waters, and God will accordingly deal with him, Eze 29:4, Eze 29:5. (1.) He will draw him out of his rivers, for he has a hook and a cord for this leviathan, with which he can manage him, though none on earth can (Job 41:1): "I will bring thee up out of the midst of thy rivers, will cast thee out of thy palace, out of thy kingdom, out of all those things in which thou takest such a complacency and placest such a confidence." Herodotus related of this Pharaoh, who was now king of Egypt, that he had reigned in great prosperity for twenty-five years, and was so elevated with his successes that he said that God himself would not cast him out of his kingdom; but he shall soon be convinced of his mistake, and what he depended on shall be no defence. God can force men out of that in which they are most secure and easy. (2.) All his fish shall be drawn out with him, his servants, his soldiers, and all that had a dependence on him, as he thought, but really such as he had dependence upon. These shall stick to his scales, adhere to their king, resolving to live and die with him. But, (3.) The king and his army, the dragon and all the fish that stick to his scales, shall perish together, as fish cast upon dry ground, and shall be meat to the beasts and fowls, Eze 29:5. Now this is supposed to have had its accomplishment soon after, when this Pharaoh, in defence of Aricius king of Libya, who had been expelled his kingdom by the Cyrenians, levied a great army, and went out against the Cyrenians, to re-establish his friend, but was defeated in battle, and all his forces were put to flight, which gave such disgust to his kingdom that they rose in rebellion against him. Thus was he left thrown into the wilderness, he and all the fish of the river with him. Thus issue men's pride, and presumption, and carnal security. Thus men justly lose what they might call their own, under God, when they call it their own against him.
3. The ground of the controversy God has with the Egyptians; it is because they have cheated his people. They encouraged them to expect relief and assistance from them when they were in distress, but failed them (Eze 29:6, Eze 29:7): Because they have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel. They pretended to be a staff for them to lean upon, but, when any stress was laid upon them, they were either weak and could not or treacherous and would not do that for them which was expected. They broke under them, to their great disappointment and amazement, so that they rent their shoulder and made all their loins to be at a stand. The king of Egypt, it is probable, had encouraged Zedekiah to break his league with the king of Babylon, with a promise that he would stand by him, which, when he failed to do, to any purpose, it could not but put them into a great consternation. God had told them, long since, that the Egyptians were broken reeds, Isa 30:6, Isa 30:7. Rabshakeh had told them so, Isa 36:6. And now they found it so. It was indeed the folly of Israel to trust them, and they were well enough served when they were deceived in them. God was righteous in suffering them to be so. But that is no excuse at all for the Egyptians' falsehood and treachery, nor shall it secure them from the judgments of that God who is and will be the avenger of all such wrongs. It is a great sin, and very provoking to God, as well as unjust, ungrateful, and very dishonourable and unkind, to put a cheat upon those that put a confidence in us.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain In the tenth year, in the tenth month, in…
In the tenth year, in the tenth month, in the twelfth day of the month,.... In the tenth year Jeconiah's captivity, and Zedekiah's reign. The Septuagint version has it, the twelfth year; and the Arabic version, the twelfth month; and the Septuagint version again, the first day of the month; and the Vulgate Latin, the eleventh day of it. This month was the month Tebet, and answers to part of December, and part of January. This prophecy was delivered before that concerning Tyre, though placed after it, because fulfilled after it, which gave Nebuchadnezzar Egypt as a reward for besieging and taking Tyre:
the word of the Lord came unto me, saying; as follows.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain A prediction of the destruction of Pharaoh, for his…
A prediction of the destruction of Pharaoh, for his treacherous dealing with Israel, ver. 1-7. A prediction of the desolation of Egypt, ver. 8-12. A promise of the restoration thereof in part, ver. 13-16. A prediction of Nebuchadrezzar's passing it, ver. 17-20. A promise of mercy to Israel, ver. 21.
The tenth year - Of Jeconiah's captivity.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain This and the three following chapters foretell the conquest…
CHAPTER XXIX
This and the three following chapters foretell the conquest of
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Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar, which he accomplished in the
twenty-seventh year of Jehoiachin's captivity. The same event
is foretold by Jeremiah, Jer 46:13, c.
The prophecy opens with God's charging the king of Egypt
(Pharaoh-hophra) with the same extravagant pride and profanity
which were in the preceding chapter laid to the charge of the
prince of Tyre. He appears, like him, to have affected Divine
honours and boasted so much of the strength of his kingdom,
that, as an ancient historian (Herodotus) tells us, he
impiously declared that God himself could not dispossess him.
Wherefore the prophet, with great majesty, addresses him under
the image of one of those crocodiles or monsters which
inhabited that river, of whose riches and revenue he vaunted;
and assures him that, with as much ease as a fisherman drags
the fish he has hooked, God would drag him and his people into
captivity, and that their carcasses should fall a prey to the
beasts of the field and to the fowls of heaven, 1-7.
The figure is then dropped; and God is introduced denouncing,
in plain terns, the most awful judgments against him and his
nation, and declaring that the Egyptians should be subjected to
the Babylonians till the fall of the Chaldean empire, 8-12.
The prophet then foretells that Egypt, which was about to be
devastated by the Babylonians, and many of the people carried
into captivity, should again become a kingdom; but that it
should never regain its ancient political importance; for, in
the lapse of time, it should be even the BASEST of the
kingdoms, a circumstance in the prophecy most literally
fulfilled, especially under the Christian dispensation, in its
government by the Mameluke slaves, 13-16.
The prophecy, beginning at the seventeenth verse, is connected
with the foregoing, as it relates to the same subject, though
delivered about seventeen years later. Nebuchadnezzar and his
army, after the long siege of Tyre, which made every head bald
by constantly wearing their helmets, and wore the skin of off
every shoulder by carrying burdens to raise the fortifications,
were disappointed of the spoil which they expected, by the
retiring of the inhabitants to Carthage. God, therefore,
promises him Egypt for his reward, 17-20.
The chapter concludes with a prediction of the return of the
Jews from the Babylonish captivity, 21.
NOTES ON CHAP. XXIX
Verse 1. In the tenth year] Of Zedekiah; and tenth of the captivity of Jeconiah.
The tenth month, in the twelfth day of the month] Answering to Monday, the first of February, A.M. 3415.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Eze 29:1. In the tenth year, &c. — The…
Eze 29:1. In the tenth year, &c. — The prophecies of Ezekiel, in regard to foreign nations, are not placed according to the order of time in which they were delivered, but according to the respective distances of the nations from Judea, beginning with those which lay nearest to it. And with respect to the prophecies against Egypt, it is justly remarked by Dathius, that this and the three following chapters are joined together, because they treat of the same subject, though they consist of prophecies uttered at very different periods of time. The period assigned in the present text, in this verse, for the prophecy first recorded here, is during the siege of Jerusalem; and, agreeably to Eze 29:6-7, might be immediately after Pharaoh’s retreat, foretold by Jer 37:7.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain The tenth year - Jerusalem had been besieged, but…
The tenth year - Jerusalem had been besieged, but not taken. Jeremiah delivered his prophecy against Egypt, about the time when the approach of Pharaoh Hophra’s army caused the Chaldaeans for the time to raise the siege Jer 37:5. This was the solitary instance of Egypt meddling with the affairs of Palestine or Syria after the battle of Carchemish (compare 2Ki 24:7); it met with speedy punishment.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Eleventh. Hebrew, "twelfth." Septuagint, "first of the twelfth month…
Eleventh. Hebrew, "twelfth." Septuagint, "first of the twelfth month of the twelfth year." There are other variations in the versions. St. Jerome reads the first in Hebrew, as Theodoret does, who says that it and the Syriac have the twelfth year: which is true, if we neglect the points. (Calmet) --- The prophets do not observe the order of times. What is here delivered, was sooner fulfilled; or Tyre and Sodom lay nearer than Egypt. (Worthington) --- The three next chapters regard that country.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain 3. Egypt (Ch. 29–32)
3. Egypt (Ch. 29–32)
Eze_29:1. In the tenth year, in the tenth [month], on the twelfth of the month, came the word of Jehovah to me, saying, 2Son of man, Set thy face upon [against] 3Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and prophesy upon him, and upon all Egypt! Speak and say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I [come] upon thee, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his streams, who saith, To 4me [belongs] my stream, and I, I have made myself. And I give rings in thy jaws, and hang the fish of thy streams, on thy scales, and draw thee out of the midst of thy streams, and every fish of thy streams [which] hangs on thy scales; 5And I set thee free [drive thee] into the wilderness, thee and every fish of thy streams; upon the plains of the field shalt thou fall, thou shalt not be picked up, and not gathered; to the beast [living creatures] of the earth and to the fowl of the heaven I have given thee for food. 6And all the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am Jehovah! Because they were a staff of reed to the house of Israel,—7When they take hold of thee by thy hand, thou art broken, and splittest to them every shoulder [the whole shoulder]; and when they lean upon thee, thou art shattered, and lamest for them all loins,—8Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I bring upon thee a sword, and root out of thee man and beast. 9And the land of Egypt is [shall be] for desolation and a waste, and they know that I am Jehovah! 10Because He said, The stream [belongs] to me, and I, I have made it, Therefore, behold, I am against thee, and against thy streams, and I give the land of Egypt for deserts of waste of desolation, from Migdol to Syene [seveneh], and even to 11the borders of Cush. Foot of man shall not pass through it, and foot of beast 12shall not pass through it, and it shall not be inhabited forty years. And I have given the land of Egypt [for] desolation in the midst of desolate lands, and its cities shall be desolate forty years in the midst of desolate cities, and I disperse 13Egypt among the heathen and scatter them in the lands. For thus saith the Lord Jehovah, At the end of forty years will I gather Egypt out of the peoples 14whither they were dispersed: And I turn the misery of Egypt, and bring them back to the land of Pathros, to the land of their birth; and they are there a low 15kingdom. Lower than the kingdoms shall it be, and it shall not lift itself up any more above the heathen; and I diminish them, so that they do not rule among the heathen [have dominion over them]. 16And it shall no more be for confidence to the house of Israel, a remembrancer of iniquity, when they turn after them; and they know that I am the Lord Jehovah. 17And it came to pass in the seven and twentieth year, in the first [month], on the first of the month, the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, 18Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon has caused his army to serve a great service against Tyre: every head became bald, and every shoulder peeled; and there was not reward for him and his host out of Tyre for the work, which he has wrought against it [the city]. 19Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I give Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon the land of Egypt, and he takes away its tumult, and plunders its spoil, and seizes its prey; and it is a reward to his host. As his hire for which he has wrought against it [Tyre], 20I have given him the land of Egypt, because they did 21[it] for Me—sentence of the Lord Jehovah. In that day will I make a horn to bud forth to the house of Israel, and I will give thee the opening of the mouth in the midst of them; and they know that I am Jehovah.
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Eze_29:1. Sept.: ... μια τ.μηνος—
Eze_29:2. ... μια τ.μηνος—
Eze_29:3. ... στηρισον τ. προσωπον.
Eze_29:4. ... τας παγιδας … ταις λετισιν σου τροσξολληθησονται.
Eze_29:5. και καταβαλω σε ἐν ταχει κ. ταντας—
Eze_29:7. Sept.: ... … τῃ χειρι αὐτων, ἐθλασθης, κ. ὁτε ἐπεκροτησεν ἐπ’ αὐτους πασα χειρ κ. ὁτε ἐπανεπαυσαυτο ἐπι σε,συνετριβης κ. συνεκλασας αὐτων—Vulg.: … te manu … et lacerasti … et dissolvisti omnes renes eorum.
Eze_29:10. ... χαι ἐτι ταντας τ.ποταμους σου … εἰς ἐρημου χ.ῥομφαιαν χ.ἀπωλειαν ἀπο Μ. χ.Συηνης—Vulg.: … in solitudines, gladio dissipatam a turre Syenes—
Eze_29:12. ... εἰς ἀπωλειαν ἐν μεσω̣ τ. ἐρηωου, … ἀφανισμος ἐσται—
Eze_29:14. Sept.: ... χαι χατοιχιω αὐτους, … ὁθεν ὲληφθησαν—in terra nativitatis suæ—
Eze_29:15. παρα πασας τ. ἀρχας. Οὐ μη … του μη εἰναι αὐτους πλειονας ἐν—
Eze_29:16 ... εἰς ἐλτιδα αʹναμιμνησχουσαν ἁμαρτιαν ἐγ τω̣ αὐτους ἀχολουθησαι ὀτισω τ. χαρδιων αὐτων—docentes iniquitatem. ut fugiant et sequantur eos;—
Eze_29:17. ... μια τ. μηνος τ.πρωτου—
Eze_29:19. ... τ.πληθος αὐτης—
Eze_29:20. Ἀντι τ.λειτουργε;ας αὐτου ἡς ἐδουλευσεν—19 … exercitui illius (20) et operi quo servivit—
Eze_29:21. ... ἀγατελει χερας παντι τ.οἰχω̣—pullulabit cornu.
EXEGETICAL REMARKS
In reference to the anti - Chaldean coalition, Egypt, as the mainstay of the undertaking, justly forms the conclusion of those prophecies toward such as were without. But even apart from this, the significance of Egypt, as well in its antagonistic position to the Chaldean monarchy as in its relation to the people of God, and therewith to the world in general, demanded an adequate treatment at the close.
Eze_29:1-16. Outline of the Prophecy as a whole.
Eze_29:1-2. As to time (b. c. 588?), this first prophecy upon Egypt goes before Ezekiel 26 (two months, eighteen days, Schmieder). That notwithstanding it is placed later, shows the position of Egypt at the close is to be regarded as an intentional one; comp. also Eze_29:18-19. Hengst. remarks: “The prophecy, as appears from Eze_24:1, was delivered during the siege of Jerusalem. The occasion is the hope of recovery through Pharaoh.” (Schmieder: six months, except three days, before the taking of the city (Jer_39:2), one year and two days after the prophet’s mouth had been shut for his people.)
Eze_29:2. שׂים פניך על, elsewhere with אל; for example, at Eze_6:2.—פרעה, the title of all the native kings of Egypt down to the Persian times; according to Josephus and the Coptic, as much as king (comp. פֶּרַע, prince); Jer_44:30, Hophra. The prophecy, in accordance with its general character, stretches over king and people, or more precisely, the land.
Eze_29:3-6 a. This portion has respect to the king of Egypt.—תנים, only here, according to Gesen. a mere corruption for תנין; according to Hengst. intentionally the plur. majestatis from תנין=תן: “since this dragon blows himself up so much, sets himself forth as the ideal of all dragons.” What is meant by it is no great sea-fish or great serpent, but what was so distinctive of Egypt, as also suitable for the description in Eze_29:4, the crocodile; Job 40; Job_41:25-26. For a farther symbolical application of the idea, comp. Isaiah 27.; Psa_74:13-14; Revelation 12. (תנה–תנן—τεινω, to stretch, of the long-stretching body; also of the long-protracted sound, the jackal.)—The consciousness of power on the part of the Pharaohs, their pride of sway, is visibly expressed by רבץ (Eze_19:2), the secure rest, the undisturbed comfortable lair, after the manner of the crocodile, and by the nearer designation: in the midst of his streams. יְאֹר (יאור) Gesen.: an Egyptian word, on the Rosetta inscription, jor—here of the (seven) arms of the Nile (Isa_7:18), elsewhere of its canals, when those are called נהרות The Nile is “the heart of Egypt”, on account of which divine honours were of old paid to it, in particular by the kings, with devout regard, “as the vivifying father of all that exists” (Champollion). As he already says my stream (Eze_28:2), the לי may not merely import that it belongs to him, is his property, but: it belongs to me of right, or so that it cannot be taken from me—therefore lawfully and inalienably. It gives expression to the loud boast on the ground of natural might as from primeval time and for ever; in which lies the heathenish contrast to Jehovah, who alone is unchangeable, eternal, gives and takes according to His will.—עשיתני, either (ואני, nom. absol.), that he had made himself, which, apart from the fact that the Egyptians boasted of being the oldest men (Herod. Eze_2:2; Diodor. 1:10, 50; Plato in Tim.), accords well with the Egyptian deification of the kingdom. So upon the monuments the priests ever are represented as kneeling in the dust before the kings. The Pharaohs—and this is peculiarly Egyptian—were not merely sprung from the gods, but were themselves gods of the land (Duncker, Hist. of Antiquity, 1:150). Therefore, as the king of Tyre (Eze_28:2) with his gods’ seat asserts his divinity, so does the king of Egypt with his stream at least his independence of any other origin = what I am, that am I of myself. Or, we may take the suffix as equivalent to לי, for which, however, Eze_29:9 cannot be adduced, and which cannot be understood with Häv. as meaning: “I have secured for myself its blessings,” or, as still more strongly put by Hitzig: “I have made it for me in a right condition,” with its canals, embankments, sluices, etc., as the Dutch also have been named the creators of their land. [Targum Jonathan: meum est regnum, et ego subjugavi illud.] Jerome: He trusts in the peculiar overflowings of the Nile, which belongs to him; the rain of heaven is of no moment for him. Thus also the old expositors of Homer understood the διιπετεος of the “Aigyptos,” i.e. the Nile, of the annual overflowings (Odys. iv. 477). In its application to Pharaoh Hophra (Apries), the notice of Herodotus is characteristic, that he thought neither the power of men nor of gods could destroy his kingdom (2:100:169).
Eze_29:4. The sin referred to is followed by a corresponding punishment, as the threatening is given forth, that from both king and people the ground of their pride and prosperity should be taken away.—The “behold I am against thee” of Eze_29:3 explicates itself.—חְַחִיִּים, Qeri חַחִים, from חָח, ring, such as is put into the nose of beasts, or about the most tender and susceptible parts of the head, for taming them. Hengst.: “a double ring,” in the Dual, like לחיים, so that both halves join together in the mouth (comp. Eze_19:4). Rosenm. understands it of the hooks, by which, according to Herodotus, the crocodiles were taken (Job_41:2).—The fish, of the arms of the Nile signify the living and well-conditioned Egyptians in general, who had felt themselves like fish in the water, but were now to be placed upon dry ground. Hitzig: specially Pharaoh’s men of war; Jonathan: the princes and nobles.—הדבקתי, Eze_3:26.—For תדבק, supply אְַשֶׁר.—As to what historical signification is to be put upon the image, which is of a quite general kind, no indication whatever is given. But see the Doctrinal Reflections, No. 2.
Eze_29:5. The wilderness forms, as to the sense, the contrast to might and pomp and all sort of abundance; as to the figure, it is a contrast to the Nile, which formed an oasis in the midst of the wilderness, being secured by the heights on the west against the quicksands and storms of the great desert, and separated by the mountains on the east from the rocky cliffs, the desolate plains, and sand downs. The irrigation of the ground in consequence of the abundant waters of the Nile, especially at the season of the yearly overflowing, the cooling of the atmosphere precisely at the time when the heat is greatest, are the more important, since the blue and shining heaven is never troubled by rain-clouds, the heat is strong, and the south-west gales sometimes drive the sand and dust of the Sahara over the Libyan mountains as far as the Nile. (“Egypt is a land without rain, without springs, without refreshing winds, without alternating seasons. Instead of these, however, it possesses a fertile stream, which has not its like upon earth. In the far-reaching expanse one sees only the dead wilderness; but on approaching the Nile, all is life and prosperity. The camel of the desert scents the fresh Nile air at the distance of half a day’s journey. The Arabs call it Bachr, the sea; it is, however, one of the greatest and longest rivers of the earth, to be compared with the Amazon, Mississippi, and Yenisei.”—Sepp.) Hence, for the very reason that it reckons itself distinguished, as forming a green oasis of luxuriant fertility and coolness in the midst of a boundless waste, Jehovah brings it into that wilderness condition. A deeper parallel, however, also lies in this relegation to the wilderness, in respect to the divine guiding of Israel into the wilderness when Israel came out of Egypt.—“Upon the face of the field” means the same as “the wilderness;” according to Hengst.: “the open field as contrasted with the splendid mausoleums in which the Egyptian Pharaohs were buried in the times of their glory.” Not even an honourable burial would be given him (Targum). At all events, in the place where he falls, there he remains lying; and, indeed, what previously were separate from each other, thee and every fish, now come to be united in the representative person of the king. “Every one of his deceased subjects was, as it were, a part of Pharaoh, as in the retreat from Moscow Napoleon was seen in every dead Frenchman” (Hengst.). They are simply abandoned to the wilderness; hence there is found no gathering up and carrying away (אסף), no bringing together (קבץ).—Comp. Mat_13:47 sq.
Eze_29:6 a. A knowledge which is the very reverse of what was distinctively Egyptian, according to which the Pharaohs were honoured, on the monuments, as “the dispensers of life,” the “ever-living,” and such like. (Comp. the Rosetta inscription.)
Eze_29:6 b–12. This section has respect to the land. The words: all the inhabitants of Egypt, mediate the transition from the king to the land.—The יעןֹ can scarcely be the reason for the fact of the Egyptians knowing God; but this sentence properly breaks off here, and a new sentence begins, to which Eze_29:8 forms the conclusion; so that Eze_29:7 comes in parenthetically (Kl.).—The image of the reed-staff is derived from Isa_36:6, the more suitably as it is there found in the mouth of the Assyrian king, whose heritage passed over to the Chaldeans; and to repeat with the fact the addition of broken, used there by him, was, as a judgment already openly pronounced upon Egypt, so much the more a ground of shame for Israel. What had discovered itself even in the Assyrian time should have needed no fresh proof.
Eze_29:7. It means that a reed-staff is not only no support, but a hurtful support; it carries with it a show and deceit of a dangerous kind. It is not, however, to be forgotten, that there is a characteristic allusion involved in the figure to the prolificness of Egypt in reeds and bulrushes (Isa_19:6).—Instead of בְכַפְּךָ, the Qeri has בַכַּף, as if the personified Egypt, or this as addressed in its king, could have no hand! In order to hold fast by the image of the reed, which is certainly continued by the רצץ (Isa_36:6), Kliefoth translates: “by thy twig” but who would lay hold thus of a reed if he means to support himself upon it?—That Israel promised himself support from Egypt is evident from the result of the breaking of this reed-staff; while the wounded, torn shoulder leant upon it, the splinters of the reed ran thereinto.—Klief.: “the staff of reed pierced through the hand and arm, up even to the shoulder.” The שׁען expressly says this, at the same time strengthening the “laying hold of” to a resting thereon with the whole body.—והעמדת׳, Gesen.: only the Hiphil, transposed for וְהִמְעַדְתָ (Psa_69:24 [23]), “and makest shake.” Hengst.: sarcastically, “a pretty staying, which was, in fact, a casting down.” If the root-meaning of עמד is to draw together, it might stand here as = laming: “and drawest together for them the whole loins” (Meier). “To make to totter,” or shake, certainly says very little, and “to make to stand,” so that they must use their own loins, without any stay, can hardly be the right explanation. Klief.: it pierced through their shoulders, and made these, by injuring their muscles, ligaments, and joints, stiff and rigid, so that they could but stand, and move no more. (“So fared it with the kingdom of the ten tribes under Hosea in connection with Egypt, and likewise with the kingdom of Judah under Zedekiah.”—J. D. Michaelis.)
Eze_29:8. Solemn conclusion, with feminine suffixes, on account of the reference to the land. The sword indicates war; Eze_14:17.
Eze_29:9. The consequence of this desolation of the land.—יען, as in Eze_29:6.—Comp. at Eze_29:3. Because Pharaoh, regarding himself as all Egypt, in his lordly spirit asserts for himself the right and power of all,—ואני points back to כי אני; עשׁיתי, not so properly the Nile as generally what is to be made (Isa_10:13), always, however, with reference to the arms of the Nile,—therefore, in Eze_29:10, Jehovah falls upon this pompous “I,” as well as its supports, the streams which it calls its own, and gives the land of Egypt, with which this “I” had identified itself, to a state of most complete desolation. The heaping together of the synonyms, and the double genitive, express a superlative. Here, as at Eze_29:5, the wilderness in contrast to the Nile. [Hitzig points לָחְָרָבוֹת, “for deserts, desolation of the waste.” Schmieder remarks on it, that definite pre-intimations of inevitable chastisements are commonly milder, and draws attention to an unmistakeable softening in what follows (Eze_29:12-16), which might be still more lightened in the execution of the punishment.] From Migdol, a similar bounding to that in Eze_25:13 (Sept.: ἀπὸ Μαγδώλου); placed over against Syene (Aswan), the most southerly boundary, on the cataracts of the Nile, and to be taken as the boundary on the north. It was, as the name imports, a “fortress,” perhaps the border-watch toward Syria; on account of which Jerome: a turre Syenes. סונה, according to Champollion, from ouen, to open, and sa, through which it acquires the sense of “the opener,” the key (of Egypt). Here rise the mighty terraces of reddish granite (Syenite), which formed the building material of the Egyptian kings. The determining expression ועד׳ does not go beyond, but fixes Syene as the boundary on the Ethiopian side.
Eze_29:11 paints the desolation (Eze_29:9-10), corresponding to Eze_29:8. Neither traffic nor travel.—ולא תשב, Hengst.: “and it shall not sit” (!); therefore it shall lie down. The forty years are (according to him) historical, to be branched off from the seventy of Jeremiah, Ezekiel 25, 29, which began in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, when, with the slaughter at Circesium on the Euphrates, the power of Egypt was for ever broken. Thirty years had it continued, till the war passed over to the proper head of the anti-Chaldean coalition, and Egypt was laid waste. Hitzig takes the number for a found one (1Sa_17:16; Exo_24:18, etc.), after the analogy of Eze_4:6 (but see there). The parallel already indicated at Eze_29:5, as well as the general character of the prophecy, Nebuchadnezzar not being named here, recommend the symbolical import of the number: Israel, when delivered from Egypt, forty years in the wilderness; Egypt, with respect to Israel, forty years a wilderness; there a proving, here a judgment, punishment. [Tholuck is of opinion that the number is indeed a round one, but still of an approximate nature as regards the probable reckoning, about 36 or 37.]—On תשׁב, comp. Eze_26:20. ישׁב signifies: “to be master of something,” to possess, therefore: to tarry somewhere, and so here: to occupy house, be at home. We are not to regard it as a poetical phrase for being inhabited (Klief.), but rather to consider it as spoken with reference to the scattering, etc., of the inhabitants in Eze_29:12.
Eze_29:12. As an absolute contrast to Israel in the wilderness, corresponds in a symbolical respect the repeated delineation of the like total desolation of Egypt (Eze_12:20; Eze_14:15). In reality, this can only be understood relatively, as compared with Egypt’s former flourishing condition as a land.—The twice repeated בתוך points to the neighbouring lands, with their cities, or to the provinces of Egypt, or to the members of the coalition against Babylon (Hengst.). Häv. regards it as purely ideal, since otherwise the article must have stood before ארצות. According to Hengst.: “the desolation is not so precise a fact as the supremacy, which was decided by a single battle. It is sufficient if the beginning of the desolation took place within the fourth decennium from its end (?). The end of the forty years, at all events, coincides with that of the seventy years in Jeremiah, of which the first seventeen had elapsed at the time our prophecy was published—seven under Jehoiakim, ten under Zedekiah. Therefore there still were thirteen years to expire before the beginning of the forty years. In Eze_29:17 the prophet has himself expressly determined the beginning of the four decenniums.”—By the scattering of the Egyptians is meant the deportation of the young and the noble, as such was then associated with every hostile occupation, Nah_3:10 (Tholuck). Also those scattered through terror are not to be forgotten. Häv.: “Almost the same expressions here of Egypt, which elsewhere are used only of the dispersion and gathering again of Israel.” “Egypt the caricature of Israel.”
Eze_29:13-16. The end.
Eze_29:13. The כי assigns a reason for the forty years, by pointing to what is to take place thereafter. But that by the end of this period respect is had to the end of the Chaldean supremacy, as in Jeremiah, is not indicated in the text, nor would it have been according to Ezekiel’s style (comp. Introd. to Ezekiel 25 sq.; comp. also Jer_46:26).—The promised gathering of Egypt, in Eze_29:14, is restitution (comp. at Eze_16:53), indeed, to their original condition, but not to the height which it had then reached.—Pathros is what belongs to the south; South or Upper Egypt, Thebes, which (as Ewald remarks) “was not, according to the Manethonian dynasties, precisely the oldest seat of royalty, yet still a Southern Egypt older than Memphis; but after the time of the Hyksos, all the power of Egypt departed from Thebes.”—Comp. Herod. 2:4, 15; Diodor. 1:50.—מכורתם, see at Eze_16:3 (Eze 21:35 [Eze_21:30]).—On the expression: a low kingdom, comp. at Eze_17:14. Hengst.: “This is no mere prediction, but an indirect practical advice (Isa_41:28), to dissuade from a foolish confidence in Egypt.” The parallel, besides, with Israel has already been noticed.
Eze_29:15. Comparison with other kingdoms. Such it had often made, and therein gone to excess. Now God makes the comparison, and certainly with another result.
Eze_29:16. למבטח, compare therewith the repeated לבטח, Eze_28:26.—יהיה, masc., while formerly תהיה, a kingdom being thought of, but here it is conceived of as a people, or as king.—That the Egyptian people (as the אחריהם might indicate) could inspire Israel with confidence, so that the latter should lean upon them, support itself on them, especially as against Babylon—in that respect they were a remembrancer of iniquity (comp. on Eze_21:28 [23]). This is what is plainly expressed by פנה with אחרי, namely, “to turn oneself to any one, in order to follow him”—on which comp. Eze_17:6-7; Psa_40:5 [4]. (Hengst.: “Whosoever beguiles into iniquity brings iniquity to remembrance, or to the knowledge of him under whose cognizance it falls. For the iniquity which is committed cannot remain unmarked by ‘the Judge of the whole earth,’ nor unpunished.” Häv.: “Now Egypt comes forth as an accuser of the covenant-people before God, as a witness in respect to their want of confidence in Him, their idolatrous admiration of worldly, external power, therefore of their falling away from God.” Ewald translates: “Still further the house of Israel had a Satan for their confidence.”) The knowledge of Jehovah as Lord and Ruler, as in judgment, so in compassion, is the perpetual refrain; it is for Israel and for the heathen the end of the ways of God.
Eze_29:17-21. The appended key for understanding the prophecies concerning Egypt.—Not merely the relation to what went before, but the relation also to what follows, calls for consideration. In the former respect, the section is an appendix; in the latter respect, and generally, it is a key for the understanding of the prophecies respecting Egypt. We have to regard it as a sort of parenthesis, since the announcement of time in Eze_29:17 expressly shows it was above 16 years later than Eze_29:1, later even than Ezekiel 40. [Schmieder: exactly 16 years, 2 months, 17 days after the preceding prophecy; not quite 17 years after the destruction of Jerusalem, two years after Ezekiel’s vision of the new temple. Hitzig: the new-moon day of April 572 b. c.] It consequently stands quite apart from the preceding prophecy, but so does it also from the one that follows, Eze_30:1-19, by its closing verse. Eze_30:1-19 stands related to Eze_29:1-16, as Eze_26:7-14 to Eze_26:2-6; so that the indication of time in Eze_29:1 holds good also for Eze_30:1. Hengst. denies the number seven for the prophecies upon Egypt, because the necessary chronological specification is wanting at Eze_30:1. This reason cannot avail against the consideration that the significant number, which rules the whole, in a way that perfectly accords with its symbolical import as well as with the relation of the close (of Egypt), reverts with this close to the whole, and thereby connects the whole together. The chronological specification has been omitted at Eze_30:1, because it would have been the same as that at Eze_29:1; and the verses 17–21 are interjected here precisely on this account, that Eze_30:1-19, being contemporaneous with Eze_29:1-16, might form a separate prediction, and so complete the seven number of prophecies upon Egypt.
Eze_29:18. The thirteen years’ siege of Tyre furnishes the key for the more immediate understanding of the prophecy upon Egypt; the breaking off of the siege in question rendered possible the approaching fulfilment of the anti-Egyptian predictions.—Eze_26:7.—The work against Tyre, consequently the siege of the city, is designated great, and this not without respect to the consequences which it involved for the host of the king of Babylon. Of the bearing upon the head and shoulder, with reference to helmet and burdens, קרח and מרט are used, which presuppose long and heavy toil. According to Hengst. the works had to do with the erecting of besieging towers, and especially the casting up a rampart (Eze_26:8); but they suit decidedly better when viewed with respect to the mound running over to insular Tyre, as indicated by Ewald (Eze_26:10). Hitzig makes the ingenious remark, that the shallowness of the sea-strait in Alexander’s time, mentioned by Arrian, may have been occasioned by the efforts of Nebuchadnezzar to construct this mound. However, it is not in such respect, therefore, as to what concerns the greatness of the work, that ושכר לא׳ is to be understood of a like great reward corresponding to it. שׂכר, according to its root-meaning, is “a something made fast,”—either subjectively, what any one held fast by himself or had made fast with another, or objectively, what for material considerations must be held fast. It is in a general way denied that Nebuchadnezzar and his host had received from Tyre hire or reward for their work. As the siege was the work, the hire must mean the booty, especially with respect to the host. The separate mention of him and his host seems to point to a distinction between Nebuchadnezzar and his host in reference to the hire. Jerome affirms simply, though he does not say on what grounds, that the nobles and rich men of Tyre made away from it in ships, carrying with them their treasures over the sea, and Nebuchadnezzar’s host could find no spoil. Ewald accepts this; and Häv. cites in support of it Isa_23:6, and what happened at the siege of Tyre under Alexander (Diodor. xvii. 41; Curt. Eze_4:3). Probable, at all events more probable than the supposition of Hitzig that the money of the Tyrians was spent in the war, must be the consideration that the besiegers of Tyre also had an interest in sparing the city, and refraining from plundering it. Only the prophet does not say this, but makes the Chaldee host come to Egypt to its hurt. With the conquest of the city, however, whether it was or was not effected, our verse has nothing really to do, as Movers justly remarks. Eze_29:19 rather suggests another reference. For Nebuchadnezzar, at least, the consequence of the siege of Tyre, “his hire,” could only be Egypt, if the great work was not to remain without reward. First with the punishment of Egypt did the recompense become complete which must strike the anti-Chaldean coalition. Egypt also would otherwise have remained the spark which was ever ready to inflame a new Phœnicia and Syria. If the overthrow of Tyre was to yield profit to Nebuchadnezzar, not merely must Jerusalem be laid prostrate, but Egypt also, the pillar of all opposition, as against Assyria so against Babylon, be brought down. It is from such points of view in Babylonian policy that we are to understand what is meant by his hire not having been given him. But what naturally mediates the result, what forms the consequence of the evil, this is in truth, spiritually considered, the divine punishment; and hence the therefore, etc., in Eze_29:19. The policy of the divine recompense as against Egypt (the prop of Israel’s unfaithfulness and treachery to the covenant), so for Nebuchadnezzar’s work (“which they did for Me,” Eze_29:20), in the service of Jehovah, is primarily the key of the prophecies touching Egypt.—המון is noise, and from that “a noisy multitude;” here, on account of the connection, and because נשׂא merely is used: the great mass of things, therefore: the riches. [Ewald: “its noisy pomp.”]—As Herodotus and Diodorus report, certainly after the quite untrustworthy tradition of Egyptian vanity, Hophra had besieged the Phœnicians and Cyprians by land and sea, and returned with rich booty to Egypt. There were assuredly no lasting results of such a thing; for after the defeat at Carchemish, and the miscarrying of the relief of Jerusalem, the position of Egypt was not adequate to that; although still, as also Duncker thinks, the Egyptians might have brought home spoil and trophies. There was a glimmering of Egypt’s early splendour in the Circumstance of its being given for a reward to Nebuchadnezzar.—Hitzig takes as the subject to והיתה the land of Egypt (Eze_29:20).
Eze_29:20. פְּעֻלָּה, as in Psa_109:20, that which is wrought for, the fruit of labour. Ewald: “as his pay.”—בה is perhaps, after the expression in Eze_29:18, אשר עבד עליה, to he understood of the city of Tyre. It is commonly rendered: for which he wrought. Hitzig justly remarks: “that Nebuchadnezzar had besieged Tyre in the service of Jehovah could have been declared by the prophet only then, if the city had been conquered;” but since, according to Hitzig, this could not be, he applies עשו to the Egyptians (!), as was already done in the Targum of Jonathan, and necessarily imposes on אשר the signification: in regard to that which; that is, for that which.
Eze_29:21. This verse vividly represents the character of the whole section. It is a close which corresponds to the subsidiary character of the section, Eze_29:17-20, in relation to the general prophecy upon Egypt, by the generalness of the style in which it is given, as thereby also it accords with the design that this section should serve as a key to the Egyptian prophecies generally. Comp. the analogous Eze_28:25-26. In the latter respect it is indicated to us in Eze_29:21, that although the immediate fulfilment of that which concerned Egypt should be accomplished through Nebuchadnezzar, yet Egypt opens a farther prospect still, since it is to be regarded, in these prophecies of Ezekiel upon foreign peoples, as heathendom generally in its close coming into regard for Israel’s destruction. From this point of view, the ביום ההוא certainly connects itself with the moment of the fulfilment through Nebuchadnezzar; but it at the same time conducts farther, expands this day to “an ideal day” (Hengst.)—the day of the Lord (Eze_30:3)—to the Messianic time, as Ewald has properly recognised. [Schmieder: “every annihilation of a national power, which bent itself against the Lord, is to the prophet a type of all human power which rises against God—a type of the world’s judgment. Therefore also the promises, which were given Israel for the last time, connect themselves therewith, and now revive again.”] According to Hitzig, the attack upon Egypt was to Ezekiel the pledge of the then also beginning salvation announced in Eze_20:40 sq., Eze_17:22, Eze_16:60.—צמח, used of gradual growth out of small beginnings and constant burstings forth again, new shoots, with reference to the צֶמַח in Jeremiah and Zechariah.—The horn, as very commonly derived from horned beasts, in particular the bull, a biblical expression for strength, and the courage resting thereon; not so properly with reference to pushing (Hengst.), for which the context affords no occasion; as in contrast to the impotence of Egypt (heathendom), the power and pomp of the flesh—therefore another sense of power, the consciousness of the victory which overcomes the world. Psa_75:5; Psa_132:17; Lam_2:3; Luk_1:69; comp. also 1Sa_2:1 with respect to the following פתחון־פה.—The opening, of the mouth points expressly to Eze_24:26. (See there.) What was said in that place upon the symbolical import of the dumbness of the prophet determines also his speaking here in the midst of Israel as a prophetical one. Only, “the house of Israel” must not be resolved into the community of the Lord, and the mouth of Ezekiel into the word of prophecy, agreeably to Joel 3, as Theodoret already explained the matter; but we have to cleave to the second chief part of the predictions of our prophet, for which the opening of his mouth to Israel is, according to Eze_24:26 sq., the characteristic, in contradistinction to the first main portion of his book. But in so far will such opening of Ezekiel’s mouth have place as his prophecy of the compassions of God shall then have found their confirmation.
DOCTRINAL REFLECTIONS
1. Although the prophecy in Ezekiel 29 is of a general character, yet by the reference to Nebuchadnezzar, and especially from Eze_29:17 onwards, it gets a more specific character. We have therefore to hold by a fulfilment through the Chaldeans, and, indeed, in connection with what is said respecting Tyre. Apart from the circumstance that we have here to do with a prophet of God, we could not judge otherwise simply on this account, that a little reflection upon the inevitable disgrace of such a self-deception as would have been the case in respect to Tyre must alone have kept Ezekiel—instead of merely suppressing the prophecy in question while the book was still in his own hand—from wishing now to compensate for the mistake by awakening like inconsiderate and rash expectations concerning Nebuchadnezzar in regard to Egypt. For one to whom the prophet is nothing but a writer must still at least credit him with this much of worldly prudence in respect to his literary honour. And if Ezekiel must needs prophesy ex eventu (as Hitzig, for example, conceives), then prophecies like those contained in Ezekiel 26 and some following ones are purely unthinkable, so far as they remained unfulfilled; since it cannot but be supposed, that when our prophet closed his book, matters must have stood before him widely different from what they are presented in his prophecy. The “dogmatic criticism,” however, cannot once admit now that a prophecy has been fulfilled,—a limitation of the standpoint which is not improved by the circumstance that the truth of the divine word (2Pe_1:21) is made dependent on the statements or the silence of profane writers, and even of such as have given notoriously imperfect reports. The false prophet, he whose word did not come to pass, has by God’s word (Deu_18:22) been as clearly as possible excluded from the canon.
2. The reward for work, which, as Hitzig rightly enough says, had still to be given to Nebuchadnezzar, raises no question as to the conquest and, as could not fail to happen after a thirteen years’ siege, the destruction of Tyre. If the booty might have been thought of for the army, for Nebuchadnezzar it is necessary to think of Egypt. The song of triumph demanded by Hitzig for the fulfilment of the prophecy against Tyre is the double lamentation which we find in Ezekiel 27, 28. Every one has his peculiar manner. But as regards the so-called “historical witnesses,” who should speak the decisive word on the fulfilment or non-fulfilment particularly of the prophecy of Ezekiel in respect to Egypt, they are “the Greek historians, at the head of whom stands Herodotus, and they know absolutely nothing of a Chaldean invasion of Egypt—nay, their narration is opposed to anything of the kind” (Hitzig). This is imposing; let us reflect, however, that Herodotus had also learned nothing from his Egyptian informants of the defeat at Carchemish. We need only mention farther, that this Greek historian himself reproaches the priests of Egypt, and precisely in regard to this particular time, with embellishing the history of their country. Now, according to Herodotus, Pharaoh Hophra—in consequence of the defeat which his army sustained from the Cyrenians, against whom it was to have rendered help to the Libyans, and of the revolt which in consequence thereof, and of the foreign mercenary troops retained in Egypt, broke forth on the part of the Egyptian warrior-class against Amasis, who, instead of bringing back the rebels to obedience, suffered himself to be proclaimed king by them—lost freedom and his throne, and by the infuriated people was even murdered. Tholuck, who, “if the cattle with the ark of the Lord should once turn aside, would not obstinately drive forward,” remarks that as a witness Herodotus alone comes into consideration; before whom, however, the testimony of Ezekiel, himself a contemporary of the events, has no need to be abashed. “If Herodotus readily received intelligence of the prosperous battle fought by Necho at Megiddo, but none respecting the much more important defeat sustained by him on the Euphrates from the Chaldeans, should it be thought strange if the priests observed silence also regarding the irruption of the Chaldeans into their own land? yea, if the miserable end which Hophra suffered through the foreign conqueror should have been rather represented by them as the deed of his own people?” (So also Rawlinson’s Herod. B. ii. appen. c. 8.) With a fair appreciation of the historical representation of Herodotus, the cause there assigned, especially the revolution among the warrior-class of Egypt, might suffice for the overthrow of Hophra. Yet the hatred of the Egyptian people, not only expressed in Herodotus, but confirmed by monumental evidence (Rossellini points in this connection to a by-name of Hophra on the monuments: “Remesto”)—such a hatred as is described in Herodotus toward Hophra (ii. 161–169), manifested in respect to a native ruler, is scarcely to be explained from what is stated, if it did not come into some sort of connection with a Chaldean invasion of Egypt, whereby the haughtiness of Hophra might well appear all the more hateful to the Egyptian people, as the misery of the land and the inhabitants, occasioned by him, stood in sharpest contrast to the previous prosperity and splendour. The grudge of the Egyptian warrior-class against the foreign mercenaries could not be of such moment as some have supposed, since even Amasis, who thereafter held possession of the throne till his death (forty-four years), and was succeeded in it by his son, took lonians for his bodyguard, and generally granted to the Greeks still greater favour and privileges than his predecessor. Besides, as generally held, there is also the outline of the prophecy against Egypt in Ezekiel 29, which exhibits a distinction between Eze_29:6 sq. and Eze_29:4 sq.—in the one, the sword constitutes the figure (Eze_29:8); in the other, overthrow with reference to the wilderness. Especially if Hitzig’s interpretation of “the fish” (Eze_29:4) as denoting Pharaoh’s men of war is accepted, and under “the wilderness” there is couched an allusion to Libya, what is said in Eze_29:4 sq. might be explained by the narration which is reproduced by Herodotus, and Eze_29:6 sq. would, with the sword of Nebuchadnezzar, be such a supplementing as the conquest of Tyre to the siege of that city, also given elsewhere. Out of the miserable condition in which Hophra perished, Amasis would then have raised Egypt. Anyhow, as Tholuck brings out, the death of Hophra falls exactly into the time in which the occupation of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar must have occurred; and thus the position of matters approaches to that which is wont to be extracted from Josephus in confirmation of our prophecy—contr. Ap. i. 19. It is there stated that Berosus reports of the Babylonian (Nebuchadnezzar) that he “conquered Egypt, Syria, Phœnicia,” etc. Again, in Ezekiel 20, he states that Megasthenes placed Nebuchadnezzar above Hercules, since he had subjected to himself a great part of Libya and Iberia (comp. Antiq. x. 11. 1, and Strabo xv. 1. 6; see also Häv. Comm. p. 435, against Hitzig’s remarks). In the 10th book of the Antiq. Eze_9:7, Josephus expresses himself to this effect, that “in the fifth year after the destruction of Jerusalem, which was the twenty-third of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, he made an expedition against Cœlesyria; and when he had got possession of it, he made war against the Ammonites and Moabites; and when he had brought these nations into subjection, he fell upon Egypt in order to overthrow it, and did indeed slay the king who then reigned, but set up another; after which he took those Jews that were there captive, and brought them to Babylon,” etc. The ten years’ time, which Hitzig doubts as the period of the earlier warlike expeditions, is maintained by Tholuck. The fifth year after the taking of Jerusalem would be 581; the thirteen years’ siege of Tyre would fall into the period 586–572 or 573. For the different actions which were in part parallel as to time, we have only to suppose various divisions of the army employed, so that the whole might of Nebuchadnezzar did not at the same time lie before Tyre. The forty years of the Egyptian oppression, Tholuck, like Niebuhr, extends over the entire space that lies between the disaster at Carchemish and the overthrow of Hophra (thirty-six years), “during which Egypt, through the continued and in great part unfortunate warlike enterprises of Hophra, must have been much depopulated and extremely weakened, till at length the inroad of the Chaldeans consummated the oppression.” Tholuck thinks that, “as the prophets in the beginning of the fulfilment comprehended the future (Jer_13:18; Eze_30:24), in the last and completed fulfilment they also comprehended the earlier incomplete ones.” The symbolical explanation of the forty years is not thereby denied (see the exposition). The worth of the statements of Josephus may be questioned, as is done by Hitzig; but for the relation of profane history to our prophecy, it suffices that Hophra miserably perished (Eze_29:4 sq.; Jer_44:30 sq.), and that Egypt again revived, as took place under Amasis, although as a kingdom it was fit to be compared neither with its ancient glory nor with other great monarchies (Eze_29:13 sq.). As regards the resuscitation of Egypt, Duncker mentions that, according to a return of the priests, it then reckoned 20,000 country towns and cities (Herzog’s Realencyc. 1 p. 150), though it was “the last period of Egypt’s glory;” and Lepsius says of the same, that Egypt succumbed to the first pressure of the Persian power, and remained from 525 to 504 a Persian province; that afterwards it became again for a short time independent, until in 340 it was reconquered by the Persians, and in 332 fell under Alexander the Great, etc.
3. Upon the importance of Egypt for the revenge of Nebuchadnezzar, see the exposition of Eze_29:18. Also generally for the Chaldean policy the transition to Egypt is rendered plain to us from Eze_29:17 sq. (Häv.: “if Nebuchadnezzar would make the possession of Phœnicia once for all sure, Egypt must be completely broken.”) Of the importance of Egypt by itself, its characteristic importance, some notice has already been taken, toward the close of the introductory remarks to Ezekiel 25; as also of the distinction, indicated with correct feeling by Keil, between Egypt and the other nations mentioned by Ezekiel. But what Egypt signifies in its connection here, this must be discerned from its relation to Israel. It is quite true that the charge laid against Ammon, Moab, etc., also against Tyre, for spiteful joy, hostility, envy toward Israel, is not mentioned in respect to Pharaoh and Egypt. It may be said that Egypt’s guilt in regard to Israel was that rather of a false, treacherous friendship. If, on the other hand, the excess of proud self-sufficiency must be regarded as the characteristic of Egypt, the same sort of self-elation meets us in the king of Tyre (Ezekiel 28); and in this respect Tyre formed a fitting transition-point to Egypt. The distinction between Tyre and Egypt might perhaps be found in this, that while in particular the kingdom of Tyre had had its time of sacred splendour and past greatness, as we have seen, in its former connection with the kingdom of David, Egypt on its part acquired importance on account of the sojournings of the pilgrim-fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and still more on account of the formation of their descendants into a people. Above all, the idea of redemption was associated with the land of Egypt. Here, therefore, the inverse relation holds good: Tyre has gone with Israel to school; Israel, on the other hand, was at school in Egypt, as was evidenced in manifold agreements and contrasts exhibited in their peculiarity as a people, without our needing on that account to ride off on the Spencerian principle [namely, of a servile borrowing from the institutions of Egypt]. More than from anything else, may be understood from Israel’s reminiscences as a people, and the impress of Egyptian style and manner even upon their sacred things, their abiding sympathetic turning back toward Egypt. That Israel could not let Egypt go out of sight had its root in human nature; we must learn even from the children of this world (Luk_2:6). But it had also its dangerous side. It was Israel’s worldliness, relapse, since Israel had been delivered by Jehovah from this world, and Jehovah had through Moses threatened them in connection with Egypt with the greatest evils (Deu_28:68). We have tribulation in the world, and we may have fear before the world; such fear, however, may be salutary in its operation. But dangerous is the stay that is sought in Egypt, trust and confidence therein. In this respect Egypt is designated a remembrancer of iniquity (Eze_29:16), since for Israel it had, and not as of yesterday, but from of old (comp. also Eze_16:26; Eze_23:8; Eze_23:19), the fatal significance of a pride which resists Jehovah and leads away from Him, of a consciousness of worldly power, which amid the characteristic Pharaonic arrogance expressed itself just as distinctly (Eze_29:3; Eze_29:9) as in Exo_5:2, and had this the more seductively, as a self-conscious abiding worldly power is in fact fitted to impose on people. Friendship with Egypt is the most contemptuous relation in which Israel can be thought of, on account of the indifference which it necessarily implied on the part of the Israelitish people not only in regard to their former house of bondage, but also to the mighty deliverance obtained from it, and generally in what concerned their relation to Jehovah, on whom, as their own and their fathers’ God, they had been thrown from their state of childhood. To make account of this specific historical position in respect to each other, according to which the growth, bloom, and decay of Israel were closely interwoven with Egypt, the prophecy of Ezekiel “dwells at greater length on Egypt than on the other nations” (Häv.). Still more, however, it serves to explain the representation of the judgment upon Egypt as strikingly parallel with that on Israel, and to the last carried out (comp. Eze_29:5; Eze_29:9 sq., 12, 13, etc.). Not less remarkable, because singular, is the prospect and declaration in regard to the resuscitation of Egypt, and of it alone, which have been introduced into the prediction of our prophet; by this also is Egypt quite expressly kept parallel with Israel. The reminiscence which brings up Egypt so distinctly is not simply that of the house of bondage, or of iniquity, but it is Joseph’s post of honour, and the corn granaries of Jacob, together with his family. Comp. also Deu_23:7.
4. The interpretation of Neteler strikes out what is certainly a quite different path, strikingly reminding one of Cocceius, only with a specially Catholic tendency. According to him, the prophecies against the foreign nations constitute four groups, each of which contains four pieces: the first, Ezekiel 25; the second, the overthrow of the Canaanitish culture - development, standing in contrast to the higher calling of Jerusalem, and reaching its culmination in Tyre. The prophecy against Sidon he severs from Tyre, in the interest of this fourfold division; it belongs to the Egyptian group, inasmuch as “Sidon’s bloom falls into the time in which Egypt was the bearer of the Hamitic power and culture,” and “the Sidonian development was a shoot of the Hamitic-Egyptian.” The promises for Israel in this third section (Eze_28:20 to Eze_30:19) must stand parallel with those of the same kind in the first group, wherein punishment is threatened to the four nations with reference to Israel; as the first group, “through Ezekiel 21 (Ammon), is placed in connection with the first destruction of Jerusalem,” so “the third stands, through the opening of the mouth which occurs in it, in closer relation to the symbol of the second destruction of Jerusalem.” The four last prophecies against Egypt are “mere symbols,” according to Neteler. As Ammon “drove the surviving remnant, after the destruction of Jerusalem, out of Judea,” so had “Moab decoyed Israel into gross idolatry before their entrance into Canaan;” and so, in the prophecies against Ammon and Moab, the beginning and end of Israel in regard to Canaan are connected together. The punishment of Edom and the Philistines must point to the “re-establishment of the house of David.” In regard to Tyre Neteler expresses himself thus: “The command given to Israel to root out the Canaanites, but by them neglected to their destruction, God will execute on Tyre through Nebuchadnezzar;” and this command must stand in a noteworthy relation to the historical development of the last period of 800 years before Christ, in which “those to the west (Carthaginians, Greeks, Romans) brought a real advance, while those to the east (the Hamitic kingdoms of Ethiopia and Egypt, the Semitic kingdoms of Assyria and Chaldea, the Japhetic Medians and Persians) repeat the development of the two earlier periods in smaller measure, yet as if thereby the problem of the western circle should be solved.” He says: “If Israel, through the extirpation of the Canaanites, according to Num_36:6-9 (!), had entered into the place of the Phœnicians, it would have formed the first member in the development of this period, and would have shown the right path to the Greek culture which came forth in the second third of it.” To retrieve as much as possible that which was neglected (! ?), “Nebuchadnezzar must subject the Hamitic Tyre, even to the pillars of Hercules, and unite the eastern circle to the monstrous Chaldean kingdom, so that the externally insignificant Israel might be set in the centre of this gigantic Semitic power, which extended its sway even over the Turanian tribes in the high north.” This contrast between the Semitic and Hamitic races (already occurring in the prophecy of Noah) must be of great importance for the understanding of the symbolical representation of Ezekiel in the prophecies relating to Tyre and Egypt. Upon the third group which Neteler distributes, and which reaches to Eze_30:19, we learn that, first of all, in the prophecy against Sidon, “the second possession of the land is associated with the first, as in Ezekiel 20 the first deliverance from Egypt is made parallel with a deliverance in a higher sense.” “As Israel did not fully carry out the extirpation of the Canaanites, whose place, according to Num_33:54, it was their part to occupy, these were turned for them into thorns and briers. With the second possession, on the other hand, the servitude of Canaan, which was announced even by Noah, was after a sort realized, since the Canaanitish history becomes extinct. The second piece in this section, namely Eze_29:1-16, connects the end of the first Israelitish sojourn in Canaan, brought about by Egypt’s iniquity, with the end of Egypt; and the humiliation of Egypt is such an elevation of Israel, that Christianity will not be under temptation to lean upon a decaying heathenism.” The forty years occurring at Eze_29:11 sq. must not be distinguished from the forty years of Judah, for which the prophet had to lie forty days upon his right side; that is, as Neteler remarks on Ezekiel 4, “a symbolical designation of the time, reaching from the destruction of the temple to the return from exile, derived from the sojourn in Kadesh.” “The two first pieces, Eze_28:20 to Eze_29:16, set forth the world-historical ideas, which were to be realized by the introduction of Christianity, but give, as to the way and manner in which the realization should be prepared for, begun, and carried forward, no information—this being first introduced by the prophet in the third piece (Eze_29:17-21). The might of Shem, through which God conquered Canaan in the world’s history, must also carry forward the work in regard to Egypt. In the interest of Israel, whose service to God stands in contrast to Canaanitish industry, God will turn the Semitic world-power against Egypt, by which Israel was compelled to do Canaanitish work, and establish for them, on account of their labour in respect to Canaan, claims for compensation, which God would render valid because of the bondage laid by Egypt on the Israelites. The booty which God took from Egypt after the conflict, on occasion of the first deliverance, was only a type of a later plundering, which in a preparatory manner was begun by Nebuchadnezzar, and after the second deliverance from Egypt, that is, after the redemption achieved by the sufferings of the Servant of God was realized, when all power in heaven and on earth was committed to the episcopate of the Church (!!). The consequence of this victory over Egypt (Eze_30:1-19) is given in the form of a judgment upon Egypt, in which is delineated its desolation and the annihilation of its idols and yokes; but the sons also of the covenant - land are smitten by the judgment, which points to a fall that should take place among them.” The continuation of this Catholic-theological-historical explanation and interpretation of Ezekiel will be given in No. 9.
5. Cocceius remarks on Eze_29:21 : “Evil Merodach gave Jehoiachin freedom, and the first place of honour among the kings. Farther, Daniel was great in the kingdom of Nebuchadnezzar, and under the Persian dominion. Cyrus was called by God to give command to lead the people back, that they might rebuild the temple. Still higher grew the horn of Israel when they became free, and their priests assumed the diadem, as a sign of the freedom of the people, and the Israelites had become greater than their fathers, as announced in Deu_30:5. But most especially was it so, when out of David’s house the horn grew, which set the people free from all slavery, which subdued their enemies, and rendered the Gentiles subject to Israel, Psa_132:13-18.”
6. The day of Jehovah, Kliefoth remarks, “is not judgment in one point of time and destruction over the whole heathen world;” and then he continues: “The day of Jehovah is a period of indefinite duration, in the course of which God will punish with judgment and destruction all heathen nations in succession, just as they have shown their hostility to the people of God, and He sees that their time has come. From this point of view, also, is the announcement always to be understood, that this day of Jehovah is at hand. The day continues so long, that it lasts till, in the final judgment, the whole world, in so far as hostile to God, shall be destroyed; but it constantly begins anew, when any particular people, on account of their malevolence manifested to the people of God, falls under the righteous doom of perdition. Hence the day of Jehovah upon the heathen nations has, in the several prophecies, a different terminus a quo, according as they refer to this or that kind of relations.” Only it must not be overlooked, that in Eze_30:1 sq. not indeed Egypt alone is contemplated, but Egypt in its connection with heathen nations; and yet, that it is not the day of judgment upon all anti-theocratic powers that is to be understood, as already Hävernick makes the prophet see this general idea obtaining realization; but as the time of Jerusalem was come, the time when judgment had begun at the house of God, so the time must now be near when this judgment of God shall go forth upon the heathen. Hengstenberg finds here the fundamental passage for Luk_21:24, and points to the overthrow of the Roman Empire,—the “mountain” which was to be cast into the sea after the fig-tree of the Jewish people was withered (Matthew 21.), the “mulberry-tree” which was to be plucked up and removed into the sea (Luk_2:7.).
7. As in the kingdom of Tyre, Ezekiel 28, allusion was made to a time of sacredness upon the holy mount of God, so there was also found there, by way of similitude, a bringing to remembrance of Eden, and especially of the garden of God. This retrospect of paradise furnishes the beau-ideal, the standard for the Old Testament world generally; hence with Assyria, and in connection therewith in reference to Egypt, which had not the same historical position as Tyre, it appropriately comes back again in Ezekiel 31. As in the New Testament all is measured with heaven, so in the Old Testament what is or was glorious upon earth is made to hold of Eden and paradise.
8. On the derivation of the word “Sheol” there confessedly prevails a great diversity of opinion. For the biblical idea, especially the signification of the word in the Old Testament, this only is to be learned from this matter of etymological controversy, that as well the derivation from שָׁעַל, to be hollow (therefore for שְׁעֹל), since it points to “hollowing,” and in so far to the grave, as the derivation which Hupfeld adopts from: “to sink down,” and: “to go apart from one another,” therefore: sinking down, depth, abyss, and: cleft, hollow, empty space—since the burying and the being in the sepulchre can be thereby expressed—both alike avail for the affirmation, that Sheol and the grave more or less run together. The derivation, on the other hand, from שָׁאַל to demand, expresses as to Sheol only what constitutes generally the power and manner of death to demand for itself with insatiable desire all living beings (comp. Isa_5:14; Hab_2:5; Pro_27:20; Pro_30:16). As to form an infinitive verbal substantive, the use of the word belongs predominantly to the poetic language of the Old Testament, whence also is to be explained the circumstance that it never stands with the article. Sheol appears as the aggregate of all graves. Who could venture to deny this aspect of the matter, at least for the 31st and 32d chapters of Ezekiel? It is the universal grave, which calls down to itself all earthly life, how high soever it may have reached, however magnificent it may have been, however valiantly it may have fought. But much, also, as Sheol and the grave (בור) sometimes appear to approach (comp. also Isa_14:11; Isa_14:15), to cover one another, it must still not be overlooked that the grave, more exactly considered, is only the entrance into Sheol (Psa_16:10), which certainly, as it is commonly represented, keeps the hue of the grave, in generals as well as in particulars (ירכתי בור, Eze_32:23); it is the carrying over of the grave to the future state (while the grave as such is still always something here). It is quite reconcilable with this representation when Sheol is conceived of as a locality, and indeed as a deep abyss, just as the standing form of speech: “to go down,” “to be thrown down,” is thence explained as equivalent to being consigned to the dead. The occasional poetic delineation of this future must only not be formally dogmatized into an actual under-world with gates, rivers, etc. (Job_38:17; Psa_18:5 sq.) The going down of the company of Korah (Num_16:30) is often what is floating before the writer’s mind; and not so much the locality of Palestine, which was rich in grottoes and caverns, or the darkness of the Hebrew family tomb-vaults, the stillness of the Egyptian catacomb-world. The interior and inmost part of the earth (Eze_26:20; Eze_32:18), however, is not the earth’s inner region as such, but שְׁאוֹל תַּכְתִיָּה is the Sheol “beneath” (the underground, Eze_31:14); that is, partly the contrast to heaven as the region of the divine life, partly the distinction from the surface turned toward heaven, the face of the earth. Out of that contrast, in which, however, the earth also and its life have their place, and still more in accordance with this distinction from the earthly life, must Sheol and what is connected therewith be understood. The death to which one is surrendered (Eze_31:14) is not simply a going down, not annihilation, but as punishment for sin, the necessary consequence of the negation of God. Considered as a state, it is the contrast in respect to God, as curse, as judgment upon the sinner; hence the contrast in respect to life as divine, as salvation and blessedness, even to eternal perdition; and so Sheol posits a concrete, individual prolongation of life: the dead are represented in Ezekiel (Ezekiel 31.) as living on individually and in space. Passages such as Psa_104:29; Psa_146:4, and others, certainly have respect to the earthly life in the body, with its purposes and undertakings, doing and thinking, knowledge and wisdom together, Ecc_9:10 (so our Lord Himself in Joh_9:4 makes account of it for His diligence in working while in the flesh). As life on earth in a mortal body is for all men a troublesome, poor, and sorrowful thing, so certainly the advancing decay of the powers of life, with the dissolution of the union between soul and body, necessarily becomes quiescence, impotence, and withdrawal of their life-energy in regard to the appointed sphere of action. But passages like Job_26:5 sq., Eze_38:17, Pro_15:11, Psa_139:8, testify to the presence of the living God, through whom the subsisting and passing away of all beings is conditioned, as is said also in the אֲבַדּוֹן made parallel with Sheol (comp. Mar_12:27; Luk_20:38). The contrast, therefore, to the heavenly upper world as the proper region of the divine life is not that of not-being and being; and just as little is the continued existence in Sheol an unconscious shade-existence, at least not according to Ezekiel’s representation: the heroes in Sheol speak and know themselves as such over against others, feel, etc. As the designation of shades (דפאים) for the dead in the Old Testament times cannot be proved, so the appearance, for example, of Samuel (1 Samuel 28.), so entirely accordant with the spirit and address of Samuel as he actually lived, is not at all brought forward as an exception, somewhat after the manner of the Theban seer Tiresias (Odyss. x. 492 sq.). In the Old Testament, also, we read nothing of an instinctive repetition and continuation of the past life connected with the possession of blood. The representation of Sheol, into which there has often been greatly too much imported of heathen elements, is in no respect the localizing of the image, which, as Meier says, “remains like a blanched, bloodless, shadowy form, in the spirit of the living, of their dead and buried fellow-men.” Life in Sheol cannot, indeed, run counter to the conditions that prevail in respect to human life. Man is soul, but he has spirit, which for him constitutes the power wherein the life of the individual consists; while the soul is plainly the seat of that, as the body is its organ. If the life connected with the body appears as life in the flesh, when separated therefrom it will become an existence of the spirit, and departed men will necessarily have to be thought of as spirits, and can only in so far be termed “souls” as a retrospective sense of the earlier corporeal life has place. On this side the description of Sheol is certainly, and especially as contradistinguished from the earthly upperground life, kept in due regard to the state of things existing there. With the going down into the grave, the bright joyful sunlight vanishes for men; hence Sheol is the land of darkness and of the shadow of death (Job_10:21). While the world of light is an organized one, the midnight region of Sheol appears as a confused intermingling of substances, chaotic (Job_10:22). Busy life, so repeatedly designated “tumult” in this chapter of Ezekiel, becomes motionless in the grave; so in Psa_115:17 the dead go down to silence, to stillness (comp. Psa_104:17; Psa_31:18). The expression, however, of “land of forgetfulness,” Psa_88:12, must not be overstretched, though the reference is to be held fast in which it is said that, as God has given the earth to the children of men (Psa_115:16), so the manifestation of His wonder-working power and righteousness is promised to them on the earth while they are in the flesh. Not in the heathen materialistic sense, but Christologically, however still on the temporal side, the thought as to its form was presented in the Old Covenant. And thence are such passages as Psa_6:5; Psa_30:10 [Psa_30:9], Psa_88:10-11, Psa_115:17, Isa_38:18, to be understood. The dead, accordingly, are done (Psa_88:5); their state, Sheol, is without a history (on the other hand, comp. 1Co_15:19). But to complete our knowledge of the Old Testament Sheol, the ethical side is not to be overlooked, that is, the idea of recompense comes therein likewise into consideration (comp. Eze_32:23 sq.). The godly are there gathered to their fathers (Gen_25:8; Gen_35:29, etc.). It is a mode of representation which incidentally receives a very touching illustration in Luk_16:22 for the poor, who has no brother in the world, who is an abject, forlorn, when he is said to be received into Abraham’s bosom. The righteous snatched away enters into peace, and rests therein upon the foundation of the grave (Isa_57:1). How far with the soul, when unclothed of the body, there takes place “an ineffectual tormenting effort to consolidate itself corporeally” (Beck)—the spirit, however, being incapable of being contemplated apart from the soul, which conditions its individuality, therefore also not to be thought of “as sunk after death into the corruption of the flesh”—may be left undecided. It is enough that the rich man found himself “in torment.” With justice, however, Lange presses the thought that for the wicked Sheol is still not hell.
9. Neteler (comp. 4) maintains concerning Eze_30:21 to Eze_32:32, that is, the fourth of the groups set off by him, that “through four symbols the overthrow of a power standing in antagonism to the Church is exhibited,” and that what is said is to be taken “eschatologically in a wider sense.” Egypt is considered by him as “a symbol of the power of Magog,” and under the Chaldeans is found “a combination of Romans and Germans.” And here Neteler’s book dwells on the “Russian Panslavism.” The two last symbols must be fulfilled in the overthrow of Magog “only provisionally,” so that “their complete fulfilment belongs to a still later future.”
HOMILETIC HINTS
On Ch. 29
Eze_29:1-5. The close is made with Egypt, as Egypt was the beginning in respect to Israel.—“Egypt is with Ezekiel the oldest country of his people’s disgrace” (Umer.).—How clear is what God causes to be said to us! The address is plainly written, and can occasion no doubt to whom the word is directed; and not less clearly does it shine forth whose subscription stands under it, and who, therefore, will look after the punctual execution of the things spoken. It will not proceed according to man’s sayings and opinions, but as God the Lord has said.—The prophetic word so much the surer as the fulfilment of it now lies completely before us.—What still survives of the Pharaohs lies in the midst of the wilderness; they are ruins to which the sand has still refused burial!—“Where can a mortal say: This is mine, or: This remains to me? But prosperity, where it is not understood as God’s blessing, makes people stupidly proud. See there, too, the blessing of tribulations, which demonstrate before our eyes, that nothing is our right, and nothing our abiding property” (Stck.).—Those who do not seek after the things which are above regard the Nile, which flows on the earth, with precisely such eyes.—“But that there is also a spiritual Egypt may be seen from Rev_11:8, and that is a people, kingdom, and dominion which holds in fetters the people of God and makes them slaves. Now, as under the great dragon in the sea Antichrist also comes to be considered, together with his scales and members that stick to him, and are in a manner innumerable, so shall this power also after the prince of Tyre receive his doom, with all his adherents, who by overbearing conscience have done so much wrong to the faithful. Then also will appear the vain help which the house of Israel has sometimes assumed as belonging to the reed of the fleshly arm” (B. B.).—“Satan says to Jesus: All this will I give thee, all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, though still there was not an atom thereof in reality his” (Luther).—“Oh how vain is man in prosperity!” (St.)
Eze_29:4-5. Higher still than the highest is the Most High. He who comes from heaven is higher than all.—“It is bad when only amid loss people come wisely to learn that they had all of God, of which they were so proud and boasted themselves” (Stck.).—Pharaoh in the wilderness, and Jesus in the wilderness.—They who set themselves up above others may readily observe that they are thrown off and away before they are themselves aware of it!—The judgment of Jehovah upon the Pharaohs!—Jehovah at the Pyramids, a very different object from Napoleon before them.—The overthrow in the wilderness an image of a desolate ruin.
Eze_29:6-7. God punishes not those only who rely upon flesh, but those also who are flesh and yet wish others to find comfort in them.—No knowledge of God and no knowledge of self—this is what gives false self-confidence, and false confidence in man.—The love of God in discovering the false and rotten props.—“A reed is everything that is in this world, as man’s favour, temporal prosperity, beauty, yea, the corporeal life itself; from without it appears like a staff, and as if many were walking with it, but within it is hollow and brittle” (Stck.).—But for none is such a reed more suspicious than for the people to whom God has pledged Himself, and therewith all His wisdom and His omnipotence.—It is certainly the same with the deceit and show of one’s own righteousness, good purposes, and pious works. One cannot keep hand and shoulder far enough from these.—How many a one has such like splinters in his conscience!—The false reed-splinters in our bones, which make our going so feeble and our holding so insecure.—“The soldiers give to Christ a reed in mockery, Matthew , 27.” (Luther).
Eze_29:8-16. The judgment of God by the sword in its significance for enemy and friend, warrior and conqueror, land and people.—Desolation is always a mark of punishment. First men become waste, then their place is laid waste.—Where the people become waste as regards God, there God causes the land to be waste of its people.—Whosoever will have it that he has made himself to be what he says that he is, with him God must make an end, so that he may learn what he himself is, and how still God can do all.—The mine and thine, as the grand controversy which moves the world’s history.—So the sin of the people is their ruin; but though ancient history is full of examples, those who now live are not disposed to profit by them.—“Should one not be ashamed of such a speech, since it must so soon be changed into a past—it has been mine; and this often with much sorrow?” (B. B.)—The description of the earth is also a description of divine justice.—By means of fragments and arrow-heads in the yellow sands of the desert, and obelisks which still point heavenwards, people now read the names of men, of kings, and such like; but the feci of God is likewise to be read there.—The divine seasons of respite.—The years of humiliating in their significance for Egypt and for us all as punishments and deliverance from high-mindedness.—To stand low is to stand more secure than to go beyond bound and limit.—“All changes in the world have their bearing ultimately on the Church” (St. ).—God knows how to withdraw from the eyes of His own what dazzled their eyes and held them captive.—“Such is the aim of all the judgments that are inflicted, to withdraw the body of the faithful from confidence in what is human, and to supplant it by a firm trust in God” (B. B.).
Eze_29:17-21. Warrior service hard service. He who serves God does not serve without pay.—The recompense of our works is never made on the ground of merit, but is always of grace.—“The downfall of the world is the deliverance of the chosen” (H. H.). Therefore lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh (Luk_21:28).—When the world becomes poor, then the bones of the righteous flourish.—The new life out of ruins.—Upon silence to speak is better than to be silent upon speech.—It is God who must open the mouth for us, and He also can do it.—Immortality in the world and the eternal life in the sanctuary, Psa_23:6.
On Ch. 30
Eze_30:1-9. “The judgments of God pass from His own people to other peoples; hence the day of the heathen could not be far off” (Cocc.).—Despair howls, hope waits.—A day in clouds is also the day of death; the earth is shrouded from the eye, and especially when first the heaven has been covered to the spirit. Darkness then reigns below and above. How dark, then, is the grave!—Bad times are met by watchfulness; howling merely goes before them as the loud blast before the outburst of the thunderstorm.
Eze_30:4-5. Many others are carried along with the fall of one. In every judgment that takes place in the world, behold a type and prelude of the judgment which is to be executed on the world.—If not with the sinner immediately, yet on the sinner, and therefore through the sinner his companions shall be punished.—Where God strikes the blow, there not only is the stir which a people makes, and with which it makes such a noise, its work and gain brought down, but also law and order and that whereon all rests are overthrown.
Eze_30:6-7. How helpless with all his appliances may one that was helpful to us prove in a night! May God be our help, who has made heaven and earth.
Eze_30:9. Everything does service as a messenger for God; in particular His word, which hence cannot be bound, but accomplishes that whereto it is sent.—God’s seat of judgment stands always among mankind, and the world’s history is God’s judgment.—The terrors in the history of the world.—As there is a false security in individual men, so is there also a bad security with whole peoples.—The national security a national loss.
Eze_30:10-19. When men do not sanctify God on holidays, God makes their bustling activity to keep holiday.—When God wills, a man’s name can cause terror to the world. But only One Name is given under heaven to men wherein we can happily exult before all terrors.—Upon deeds of violence come still more violent ones, and tyrants are precipitated through tyrants.—“Whosoever sells himself to sin has already in doing so sold himself to his enemy” (Stck.).—God’s blessing fills, His curse impoverishes a land.
Eze_30:13. The hand of God alights some time upon all idols.—From the overthrow of heathenism is seen the vanity of idols.—“Where are the famous cities of the olden times? Why do they lie buried in disorderly stone-heaps? Sinner, behold what sin may effect” (St.),—how it may build very high indeed, yet not for continuance, and still more may destroy.—Gods and princes combined the common delusion of idolatry, at first in splendour, so afterwards in ruin!—Terror is the opposite of courage, but not the fear of the Lord.—Where God kindles a fire, it is always for judgment; the old is consumed therein, but a new springs forth out of the ruins.—Without casting down, no progress in the life of humanity.
Eze_30:16. Must not man always be engaged in conflict?
Eze_30:17. With its youth the human future of a people goes down. Even the youth should be “the chosen” of God; instead of this, Satan at no period has so much of his nature in men as in the season of youth.
Eze_30:18-19. Walk in the light while ye still have the light,—we, that is, who have the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ.—The judgment of God may, through the dogmas of men and a false philosophy, veil to us also the sun of truth, and wrap in darkness to men’s view heaven and eternity.—When at length, with the authority of God, the authority also of the law over men gives way, then, where superstition gives place to unbelief, there falls upon them yoke for yoke, one in the room of another; there is only an exchange of tyrants.—How much old and high renown have the gravediggers of the world’s history already buried under the sod among other sweepings! What is gloria mundi?—a transit.—The new plagues of Egypt.—The spirit of Pharaoh continued to be the spirit of the Pharaohs.—Self heights are no heights—none, at least, that stand in the judgment of God, and remain above though all else should go down and disappear; but a height in the true sense is that simply whereof it is said, As high as heaven is above the earth, Psa_103:11. This ought to be recognised, and that not merely at the last, amid howlings and gnashings of teeth, but betimes, when it may still serve for peace, with the calm open eye.—“The most wretched of all thoughts is that of having no part in God. How many an evil-doer has readily presented his head to the sword, in the conviction that through the punishment he should become a partaker of God!” (H.)
Eze_30:20-26. How many the things are that men prize as an “arm,” and how easily these arms are broken!—The arm of the Lord (Isaiah 53.), and the arm of man, and the armies of princes.—“More easily is an arm broken than healed; but now first of all the conscience, how Gainfully does it sting, and how long is it in healing!” (Stck.)—What God has broken, God only can heal.
Eze_30:22. But man never has enough by a fracture; so long as he can still move and stir otherwise, he must show himself. Therefore shall there come to be a destruction without mercy, if we will not submit to God on the footing of grace.—“Sickness breaks one arm, death both arms” (Stck.).—Every breakage which we must suffer is a call to repentance.
Eze_30:23. “He who will not fear God in his fatherland has no injustice done him, if in a foreign land he is made to experience all sorts of misfortune” (St.).
Eze_30:24-26. “Strength and weakness come both from God” (W.).—“Upon whose side Jehovah stands, that man prevails in the conflict; to him there is prosperity in life; he enjoys a blessing with his work. But this favour has the Lord promised to the righteous. Without God all ends unfortunately, mournfully, and in perdition” (Stck.).—What serves God, that serves also the kingdom and the power of the Spirit; just as at the last, all the kingdoms of this world shall become God’s and His Christ’s.
On Ch. 31
Eze_31:1-2. “The greatness of Egypt was the presumption against the warnings of the prophet. But greatness is no security against destruction; no greatness upon earth can withstand the strokes of God” (H.).—“With justice are kingdoms compared in Scripture to trees, as well on account of their form, the protection and shadow they afford to men and beasts, as also on account of their fruits; and still farther in this respect, that kingdoms, like trees, flourish and again cease to exist, torn up by the wind, or cut down by the hatchet of man” (L.).—It is very well for people to compare themselves with others, though not for the purpose of thinking better of themselves than others, as the Pharisee in the temple over against the publican, or in order to envy others; but humbly to learn that we are a part of mankind, and that what is human may befall us, and shall at last take place without exception. Also to make each one more contented with his lot, a comparison with others is, as a rule, fitted to be serviceable.—“Both the one and the other inference is right: As God has elevated that humble one, so can He, in His own time, elevate me; as God has abased that proud one, so may it also be done with me” (Stck.).
Eze_31:3-9. “The histories of the world might teach great lords much, that they should not rely upon their own powers” (Lg.).—Rulers and princes should be shady trees to the righteous.—“God has done good also to the heathen, that they might seek Him, if haply they might find Him, Act_17:26-27” (Stck.).—“Oh, what streams of grace flow upon the unthankful, if they would only perceive them! The waters are indeed not of one sort—one portion swims in pure felicity, another in tribulation and adversity; but the aim is uniform, and the divine loving-kindnesses which are concealed under the latter are certainly greater than the former, in the eyes of those who know to estimate things aright” (B. B.).—But their favourable condition and the friendliness of God only serve with many to puff them up, and render them proud and arrogant,—an end for which certainly all this was not given.—He with whom it overflows should make it trickle over upon others.
Eze_31:7. To be radical in the proper sense is a good thing, namely, that one should know that his root is in God.—“The true comeliness of a prince stands in comely virtues, which adorn every man, especially a prince,—clemency and justice above all; to afford protection and solace to the persecuted; to spread forth as it were his branches to the miserable; to have about him servants resplendent with his own virtues, so that, as in every branch the nature of the tree, so in every servant the character of the prince, may appear reflected. He and they must not be terrible to the good, nor oppressive to his subjects. The love of the people is a good root for a race of princes” (Cocc.).
Eze_31:8. Better to be envied than commiserated. God makes man beautiful, as He alone also makes him good; the latter is the divine nature, the former the divine form, of a man.
Eze_31:10-13. I have given thee into the hand of such and such an one—this explains much darkness.—The haughty spirit going before, the key to the fall afterwards.—“Now, however, we are all in Adam inclined to pride of soul; and the perishing things of this world, riches, honour, splendour, beauty, knowledge, etc., nourish our natural inclination, being all things which we overestimate. However, even a plain smockfrock often covers a repulsive arrogance. But kings are through their flatterers nourished in this vice, which is the root of all others” (L.).—One must grow in order to be able to lift the top so high; this is not so quickly reached;—on the other hand, to arrive at the lowest depth there needs only one overthrow, which may take place in a single moment.—One falls more quickly down a stair than one mounts up again.—God cannot suffer pride; I am meek and lowly in heart, it was said by Him who was God manifest in the flesh, Mat_11:29.—Out of the heart of man proceed also all high things that are offensive to God, which need not always wear a crown, but may have merely a pen behind the ear, or a pair of spectacles on the nose.
Eze_31:12-13. From the foreign land comes much suffering—first foreign sins, then punishment through foreigners.—A shameful fall into sin, and a frightful fall into misfortune—both invite to study.—There must also fall into the valleys branches that have been broken off, that poor people may not think the great ones of the earth are freed from death and judgment.—When the punishments of God break forth, then such as can flee gladly make off, while they were not to be enticed out of the shadow of sin, in which they delighted themselves.—God shakes the luxurious tree from top to bottom, and then all that stuck to its branches fall off; and so they are struck off, since they did not allow themselves to be warned off.—“How does the shadow of the rich vanish with the sun of prosperity, and with the shadow depart also the flatterers and panegyrists ! ” (Stck.)—He who chooses to be forsaken must become poor.—Fate can keep up the interest, but a rich man who has become poor is a woe-begone phenomenon for the world.—“How often do the goods of a rich man become scattered over the world after his death!” (Stck.)—Discern false friends in adversity!—To cut, and peck, and aid in plundering the very person in whose prosperity men formerly basked, and whom they hardly knew how to laud highly enough!—“So deeply is the friendship of the world rooted, and its caresses. So long as all goes well, friends and worshippers are readily found. But when that changes, all goes otherwise”(B. B.).
Ver.14. Precautions must be taken that the trees do not grow into the heavens.—All are born naked—no one comes in purple into the world; but that is far from working so powerfully as the thought that the king must die as the beggar.—Death the moral of the human fable.—“A mighty lesson for our time” (Richt.).—Somewhat for People who would see clearly upon the death of Napoleon.—That there is to be a general judgment after this life is evident alone from death, which strikes all, even great men.—“The consideration of the inevitable exit of all who live should beget moderation in pretensions. We take nothing with us of that which so many desire with such eagerness” (L.).
Eze_31:15-18. Great fates cast forth also great shadows.—If our terrors did but lead us to the knowledge of our misery, as well as of the glory of God!—The grave unites all at the last.—“The glory of the earth must become dust and ashes,” etc.—But who believes our report may be said also here: he who exalts himself shall be abased, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted.—“Thus God throws the loftinesses of men into one heap ” (B. B.).—“And so circumcision makes a distinction in death—not, of course, that which is done in the flesh, but the circumcised heart; so that a circumcised person may have his place also among the uncircumcised, as, on the other side, uncircumcised persons, who are not so in heart, may be counted as circumcised. At the close, however, the prophet writes the name ‘Pharaoh’ on the lid of the coffin” (Cocc.).
On Ch. 32
Eze_32:1-2. How far otherwise have the court-poets ever and anon elegized !—The comparison with lions and dragons withdraws much that is human in respect to Pharaoh.—“This robberfish (?) and dragon, which with his feet troubles the streams, is like the beast that should ascend out of the sea (Revelation 13.). Pharaoh is hence the enemy of the chosen, a roaring lion, which troubles the waters of heavenly wisdom with the slime of human additions, so that they provide no proper drink for those who thirst for salvation” (H. H.).—“Should Christian kings be like lions and dragons? They ought to be the fathers of their country, caring day and night for the welfare of their subjects” (St.).—“Tyrants and the covetous are insatiable, and cannot be at rest” (Stck.).—“Ah! how much misfortune can be brought about by a restless ruler! Therefore pray for a peaceful government of the kingdom” (St.).
Eze_32:3-10. “The godless hasten to meet their destruction, without being afraid of it, but often secretly driven thereto by God ” (H. H.).—“God is the supreme hunter and fisher; He can throw upon the lions His toils, and upon the whales His net, to catch and destroy them” (W.).—“God knows how to tame the untamed, to humble the proud, and to curb the fierce; who can resist His power?” (Stck.)—To be rejected, if not thrown entirely away, is the end of the mighty after the flesh.—Corruption the last strophe also in heroic poetry.—“How mournful is it to be cast away by God!” (Stck.)—Even the ass will plant his footstep on the wounded dying lion.—What the rich boast themselves so much of is but a carcase, which those who live after them will divide among themselves.—“After death, shame and reproach overtake the wicked and shameless” (H. H.).
Eze_32:5-6. Overflowing for overflowing; for the waters of Egypt, now the blood of the hosts of Pharaoh.—“They who formerly swam in pleasures, shall by and by swim in their own blood” (Stck.).
Eze_32:7. “The greatness of the calamity is described by the prophet from the sense of those whom the tribulation affects, to whom it seems as if the whole world were enveloped in darkness” (H. H.).—“The lights of heaven truly shine only for the happy; the sun exists not but for the sunlit eye” (H.).—“The godly sustain themselves in such circumstances by the thought that the Lord is their light, and therefore will not suffer the light of their heart to go out” (L.).—“But he who despises the light of grace, for him the light of glory also shall not shine” (Stck.).—It is also dark, and the stars even fall from the heaven, when great, noble, important, eminent men, heroes, sages, lawgivers, governors, teachers, are carried off by death—or worse, when they fall away into superstition or unbelief, ungodliness, injustice, and violence.
Eze_32:9. “Many a fall leads to the elevation of others” (St.).—To be frightened is still not to be awakened, and awakening without enlightenment is spiritual tumult without spiritual life.—The grave, too, is an unknown land, and thither we are all journeying. Yet for faith there is a sun which rises upon it, that never goes down.—“So the Lord loves to inspire terror, that He may break fleshly confidence” (H. H.).—Happy for him whom a sincere conversion has made secure against the terrors which seize upon the whole earth!—He who still has to fear for his soul, let him consider that the whole world can profit him nothing!—Every moment are we in danger of death, and consequently in sight of eternity.
Eze_32:11-16. If no other cure proves effectual, then God betakes Himself to the sword.—The method of salvation through blood and iron; but what is the state of society presupposed in connection with it!—The guillotine and the sword both do their work quickly, and bring what is before as it were under them.
Eze_32:13. “It touches a miserly man much more nearly if his beast dies, than if his children are taken from him by death” (St.).—A stock of cattle a state of peace.
Eze_32:14-15. The stillness of the desert is indeed stillness, but it is not peace, any more than to flow “like” oil is the soft nature of the spirit.—There is rest in the grave, but much unrest thereafter, yea, more unrest, and of a worse kind than existed before.—“There go the waters softly, as in mourning” (Umbr.).—But God knows how to set at rest a land and its creatures which have been plagued and misused by men. Where have the oppressors gone? They also lie still.—Lamentation does not take away the pain, but in the lamentation it lives on.
Eze_32:17-32. Whoever would gain a thorough insight into the dominions and powers of the earth, he must look down into hell.—The instructive glance into hell.—The song of hell.—La divina comœdia of Ezekiel.—The doctrine of Sheol as the doctrine of the state after death.—What does the Sheol of the Old Testament signify? (1) According to its name, the demand of death on all persons and things, therefore the power of death over every individual person and thing; therefore that death is the wages of sin, the judgment of God’s wrath which takes effect on the flesh. (2) As to the thing, it is the state after death as existence in a spacious grave; that is, notwithstanding the dissolution of the body and the separation of soul and body, a continuous life of the spirit, and that with consciousness and recollection—hence, according to the character of this, in peace or disquiet.—Woe to him whom the doom of death precipitates into condemnation in death!—One can strike up no song to the living more unacceptable, yet at the same time none more profitable, than one about dying; should any one refuse to accompany it, it will still be sung upon him.—He to whom the earth was all, when he sinks into the grave, all sinks with him. It is thus easily comprehensible how death stretches into the future, even into the grave, and how all appears as grave and graves.—People and princes, Sheol demands both.—“Only to the pious is the tomb a chamber where they softly sleep, a resting-place without pain and commotion, a mother’s bosom (as we are from the earth), a place of repose to lie down in” (Stck.).
Eze_32:19. It will be so much the worse if one has been nothing but fleshly, for death seizes in a rough and frightful manner.
Eze_32:20. The sword cuts into the life, severs from life, sadly if also from God. For to die is what still goes on, to corrupt also; but to become lost for ever, that is the death without end, to die for evermore.
Eze_32:21. The salutation of the dead toward the living when they die.
Eze_32:22 sq. “What is received into the human heart, finds its grave also there; so round about the prince of death are his grave-places, wherein after a spiritual manner he is buried” (Gregory).—The grave for the unconverted, the condemned, the perspective of the future world.—“The grave is very deep, even though in a material point of view it may be but a few feet down: it is deep enough to shroud all glory” (H.).—“Powerfully seizes the mind and humbles the pride the ever-recurring There, when the subject of discourse has respect to a fallen king and his hosts. … We look upon a limitless field of graves, and it is remarkable and peculiar to our prophet, that he transfers the graves also to the lower world” (Umbr. ).—“As the elect come from the east and the west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of God, so the cast off find their way to the uncircumcised, to the pierced by the sword, in the depths below” (H. H)—Here many graves, in the house of the Father many mansions.—The counterpart of the fellowship of believers upon earth, of the elect in heaven.—The lowest Sheol and the heavenly Jerusalem.—The earth is everywhere indeed the Lord’s, but not all the dead die in the Lord.
Eze_32:27. Men take with them into the state of the dead their knowledge, and along therewith the judicial sentence due to their manner of life.—Nothing is forgotten before God which is not forgiven.—The wrath of God remains on them, it is said in John.
Eze_32:31. “It is a wretched consolation which is derived from the circumstance that people see in others the same torments which themselves experience. And yet misguided mortals do really comfort themselves with it. It is a common necessity, they say; others have experienced the same, and are experiencing it daily,” etc. (H. H.)—The word of God, however, brings home to every man at last the application: this is such and such an one; as we find written on the tombstones: Here lies N. N.—“The Pharaohs prepare to swallow up without mercy: Jacob’s Shepherd laughs at them,” etc. (Hiller.)
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 1–7. Pharaoh under the allegory of the crocodile, and…
1–7. Pharaoh under the allegory of the crocodile, and the population as fishes. Jehovah draws him out of the waters with his hook and flings him on the land.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (1) In the tenth year, in the tenth month.—This…
(1) In the tenth year, in the tenth month.—This was exactly a year and two days after the investment of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar (Eze_24:1-2; 2Ki_25:1), and about six months before its fall, or seven before its destruction (2Ki_25:3-8). It must have been, therefore, after the time when the siege was temporarily raised by the approach of the Egyptians under Pharaoh-Hophra (Jer_37:5; Jer_37:11), and when Jeremiah prophesied the failure of that attempt (Jer_37:6-10); and probably was just when the news of that relief reached Chaldæa, and gave fresh hope to the exiles of the deliverance of Jerusalem.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain In the tenth year, etc. The precision with which…
In the tenth year, etc. The precision with which the dates of the several portions of the prophecy against Egypt are given, here and in Ver. 17; Eze_30:20 Eze_31:1 Eze_32:1, Eze_32:7, shows that each was called forth by the political events of the time, and has to be studied in connection with them. It will be well, therefore, to begin with a Brief survey of the relations which existed at this period between Judah, Egypt, and Babylon. After the great defeat of Pharaoh-Necho by Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish (B.C. 604) on which Jeremiah (46.) dwells fully, he was succeeded in B.C. 594 by his son Psammetik II the Psammis of Heb 2:160, who invaded Ethiopia, and died in B.C. 588, leaving the throne to his son Uah-prahet, the Pharaoh Hophra of Jer_44:30, the Apries of Herod., 2:161. The Greek historian tells us that he attacked Tyre and Zidon, failed in an enterprise against Cyrene, and was deposed by Amasis (B.C. 569). Zedekiah and his counselors, following in the steps of Hezekiah (Isa 30) and Jehoiakim, (Jer 46) had courted his alliance against the Chaldeans. As Ezekiel had prophesied, (Eze_17:11-18) they found that they were once more leaning on a broken reed. We have now come to B.C. 589, when Jerusalem was actually besieged, but was still dreaming ofbeing relieved by an Egyptian army.
HOMILETICS.
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Vers. 1-6. The doom of Egypt.
I AN INSPIRED PREACHER PROPHESIES CONCERNING A GREAT FOREIGN NATION. The Hebrew prophet did not confine his attention to the little strip of territory on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea, which we call the Holy Land. He was God"s messenger to the world.
1. The heathen are concerned with Gods messages. God notices them and has intentions concerning them. Therefore:
2. It is the duty of the Church to make Gods truth known to the heathen. Ezekiel was not a Jonah; he was not called upon to visit the heathen as a prophet of Jehovah. But his written words might be read by some of the more inquiring Egyptians. It is well to take large views of God"s thoughts, our duties, and the world"s needs.
II GOD CALLS A MIGHTY EMPIRE TO JUDGMENT. Tyro was greater and more famous than the little Ammonite and Moabite countries; but even Type was small compared with Egypt one of the great world-empires.
1. No people can be above the rule of God. The biggest earthly kingdom is beneath the King of kings. Egypt is compared to one of its monster crocodiles (Ver. 3). But it is not the less to be called to account by God.
2. No people can be too strong to be overthrown. Even great Egypt is to fall. The strongest have their weak places. Mighty citadels may be shaken by earthquakes. All man"s grandest works and most imposing institutions are frail, and may be broken up by the rod of the Unseen.
III THE GREATNESS OF ANTIQUITY IS NO SAFEGUARD AGAINST THE DANGERS OF FUTURITY. After China, Egypt seems to be about the most ancient empire in the world. In the region of its influence and among its neighbors Egypt was venerable with age before any of its rivals had made an appearance on the world"s stage. Its known history goes back to four thousand years before Christ. For tens of centuries this hoary old empire of the Pharaohs held on its course amidst the rising and falling of many ambitious but short-lived neighbors. Yet Egypt was not immortal. Dynasty succeeded dynasty, and Egypt long stood the shock of war and change. But at last her hour of reckoning drew near. Then her long past afforded her no shelter. England cannot live in the future on her past history. The Church of the coming age cannot stand strong and safe on no better foundation than the glory of saints and martyrs in earlier ages.
IV INTELLECT IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR A GOOD CONSCIENCE. Egypt was famous for her learning and her science. Long before the Babylonian and Persian astronomical science arose by the Euphrates, there were schools of literature, philosophy, and physical science on the banks of the Nile. It was a help in the training of Israel"s great deliverer that he was educated in the greatest center of light of his age. (Act_7:22) Yet the great intelligence of ancient Egypt did not preserve its sons from gross moral corruption, and no worldly wisdom was able to provide against the descending arm of judgment. Culture will not dispense with the need of conscience. University honors are not passports to heaven. Knowledge and thought will not shield the sinful against the wrath of future judgment.
HOMILIES BY J.D. DAVIES Vers. 1-12. The world-power doomed.
The work of the prophet is clear and definite, He does not declare his own speculations, nor the conclusions of his own judgment. He can specify the day and the hour in which God makes known to him his supreme will. Nor is the work so pleasant to the flesh as to induce men to adopt it of their own accord. The true prophet has to set himself against wickedness everywhere, of every sort and kind. He has to forego all human friendships, if he will publish God"s Word.
I THE WORLDLY KING IS SELF-DEGRADED. He is likened here to a crocodile. This is a fitting emblem for the King of Egypt. As the crocodile flourishes in the rivers of tropical lands, so the prosperity of Egypt depended wholly on the Nile. Without the Nile, Egypt would be a desert. So, instead of rising to the dignity of a true king, a representative of God, he sank into a condition of self-indulgence, i.e. to the level of an animal. To grovel in the mire, to find satisfaction in earthly possessions, to gratify the lower nature, this was the supreme aim of Pharaoh. This is animalism; this is self-degradation.
II THE WORLDLY KING IS VAINGLORIOUS. "My river is mine own: I have made it for myself." Self-degradation leads to ignorance, ignorance to pride, pride to empty boastfulness. A man must divest himself of his intelligence and his reason before he can say, "I have made this river for myself." This is an abuse of intellect, a prostitution of conscience. Not even a crocodile has said this. To depart from God is to wander into darkness, folly, madness. Such a state of mind is practical atheism. It is a direct challenge to God to display his judicial might and to vindicate his rule. Such a vain-glorious temper of mind is profane, insolent, little short of the Satanic mind.
III THE WORLDLY KING IS A DANGEROUS ALLY. "They have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel." As a man maimed or invalided rests his weight, when walking, upon some mechanical support, and suffers grievous injury if his support breaks, so was it when Israel foolishly leant upon Egypt for support. The prospect of succor was specious and plausible. Egypt promised friendly aid, but when the hour of trial came the support collapsed, and both Israel and Egypt were injured. It is perilous to trust in any godless power. We are often decoyed into a fatal ambush by appearances. Friendship, if not a real advantage, is a bane. It is an injury to us personally, if the one on whom we trusted fails; it is a hundredfold more injurious to an empire. Test your allies before you trust them.
IV THE WORLDLY KING IS EASILY VULNERABLE. Carnal security is weakness incarnate. It is a rampart of cobwebs. The King of Egypt trusted wholly in his river with its seven branches; yet nothing was easier than for God to dry up the sources of that stream, and leave the crocodile on the dry land, with dead fish sticking to his scales. This is a graphic picture of defeat, a sudden collapse of brag. The river having failed, the prophecy would speedily be verified, "I have given thee for meat to the beasts of the field and to the fowls of the heaven." Achilles was said to have been vulnerable only in the heel, but every world-power is vulnerable in a thousand points. God"s favor is the only known shield that is impregnable.
V THE DEFEAT OF THE WORLD-POWER WILL BE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF GOD"S KINGDOM. "All the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am the Lord." This is a difficult lesson for men to learn, and the task is long. Yet God is not impatient. He calmly waits his time. Slowly, yet surely, the foundations of his empire are being laid. The idols of Egypt have been completely overthrown, and gradually God is being acknowledged. "He must reign." It is a grand necessity. D.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON
Vers. 1-6. Egypt: a guilty vaunt.
Notwithstanding that Judah was now looking to Egypt for deliverance, Ezekiel uttered his strong and unqualified condemnation of that idolatrous power. The Hebrew prophet was always entirely unaffected by considerations of worldly policy. What is here energetically rebuked is the sinful pride of that self-sufficient people. "My river is my own. I have made it for myself," said the Egyptian "crocodile." Whether that tone be taken by Pharaoh or by the country over which he ruled, by the minister or the Church, by the individual or the community, anywhere and at any time, it is
I A PIECE OF FOLLY. In a purely political sense a country does belong to its inhabitants, and they have made it what it is. But in no other sense. That noble river Nile, the strength and the glory of the land, flowed in its channels and enriched the soil, not because Pharaoh or because Egypt had done anything remarkable, but because he who "sendeth forth the springs into the valleys" and "watereth the hills from his chambers" made the streams to run from the mountain-sides and to meet and flow in the great river-bed. Heaven sent the rains and the showers which fed the river which fertilized the laud. And if we will but go back far enough and trace our treasures and our joys to their ultimate source, we shall see and we shall feel the folly of appropriating to ourselves the wealth, the knowledge, the spiritual capacity, the material or moral resources, which proceed from God himself. From him they come and to him they belong. To say, "My river is my own, is to speak with falsehood on our tongue; such language is the utterance of foolish thoughtlessness.
II As ACT OF SIN. Iris positively wrong; for is it not "robbing God?" When we speak in this strain, because we think and feel in this habit of mind, we assume to ourselves that which we should be freely and continually offering to our Creater. We are denying to him that which is his due. We are showing ourselves to him as the irreverent, ungrateful, undutiful subjects and recipients that we are. Thus that which is foolish and false is also that which is guilty; it is accumulating Divine displeasure. It is taking up a position in which God, just because he loves us and. wishes our true and lasting welfare, is compelled, to say to us, "I am against yea"(Ver. 3).
III THE WAY TO DISILLUSION AND HUMILIATION. For the interpretation or application of the solemn threatenings here pronounced (Vers. 4-6), see Exposition. But however we explain the prophet"s words, it is clear that Egypt was awakened from its dream of absolute authorship and ownership, and that it had to stand down from its proud position of protector, and wear, for some time and in some degree, the yoke of subjection. Pride preceded a fall beneath those skies as beneath the heavens everywhere. Everywhere, to the proud country, to the pretentious power in Church or state, to the arrogant individual, there is sure to come the hour when the fond dream of lasting superiority is dispelled, when the pedestal on which it (he) stood is broken, when the homage once rendered it turns to defiance, and. the honor it once enjoyed is lost in shame. How excellent, on the other hand, is that humility which leads ever upwards and ends in immortal glory! C.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain Ezekiel 29-32
EGYPT
Ezekiel 29-32
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EGYPT figures in the prophecies of Ezekiel as a great world-power cherishing projects of universal dominion. Once more, as in the age of Isaiah, the ruling factor in Asiatic politics was the duel for the mastery of the world between the rival empires of the Nile and the Euphrates. The influence of Egypt was perhaps even greater in the beginning of the sixth century than it had been in the end of the eighth, although in the interval it had suffered a signal eclipse. Isaiah (chapter 19) had predicted a subjugation of Egypt by the Assyrians, and this prophecy had been fulfilled in the year 672, when Esarhaddon invaded the country and incorporated it in the Assyrian empire. He divided its territory into twenty petty principalities governed by Assyrian or native rulers, and this state of things had lasted with little change for a generation. During the reign of Asshurbanipal Egypt was frequently overrun by Assyrian armies, and the repeated attempts of the Ethiopian monarchs, aided by revolts among the native princes, to reassert their sovereignty over the Nile Valley were all foiled by the energy of the Assyrian king or the vigilance of his generals. At last, however, a new era of prosperity dawned for Egypt about the year 645. Psammetichus, the ruler of Sais, with the help of foreign mercenaries, succeeded in uniting the whole land under his sway; he expelled the Assyrian garrison, and became the founder of the brilliant twenty-sixth (Saite) dynasty. From this time Egypt possessed in a strong central administration the one indispensable condition of her material prosperity. Her power was consolidated by a succession of vigorous rulers, and she immediately began to play a leading part in the affairs of Asia. The most distinguished king of the dynasty was Necho II, the son and successor of Psammetichus. Two striking facts mentioned by Herodotus are worthy of mention, as showing the originality and vigour with which the Egyptian administration was at this time conducted. One is the project of cutting a canal between the Nile and the Red Sea, an undertaking which was abandoned by Necho in consequence of an oracle warning him that he was only working for the advantage of foreigners-meaning no doubt the Phoenicians. Necho, however, knew how to turn the Phoenician seamanship to good account, as is proved by the other great stroke of genius with which he is credited-the circumnavigation of Africa. It was a Phoenician fleet, despatched from Suez by his orders, which first rounded the Cape of Good Hope, returning to Egypt by the straits of Gibraltar after a three years voyage. And if Necho was less successful in war than in the arts of peace, it was not from want of activity. He was the Pharaoh who defeated Josiah in the plain of Megiddo, and afterwards contested the lordship of Syria with Nebuchadnezzar. His defeat at Carchemish in 604 compelled him to retire to his own land; but the power of Egypt was still unbroken, and the Chaldaean king knew that he would yet have to reckon with her in his schemes for the conquest of Palestine.
At the time to which these prophecies belong the king of Egypt was Pharaoh Hophra (in Greek, Apries), the grandson of Necho II Ascending the throne in 588 B.C., he found it necessary for the protection of his own interests to take an active part in the politics of Syria. He is said to have attacked Phoenicia by sea and land, capturing Sidon and defeating a Tyrian fleet in a naval engagement. His object must have been to secure the ascendency of the Egyptian party in the Phoenician cities; and the stubborn resistance which Nebuchadnezzar encountered from Tyre was no doubt the result of the political arrangements made by Hophra after his victory. No armed intervention was needed to ensure a spirited defence of Jerusalem; and it was only after the Babylonians were encamped around the city that Hophra sent an Egyptian army to its relief. He was unable, however, to effect more than a temporary suspension of the siege, and returned to Egypt, leaving Judah to its fate, apparently without venturing on a battle. {Jer_37:5-7} No further hostilities between Egypt and Babylon are recorded during the lifetime of Hophra. He continued to reign with vigour and success till 571, when he was dethroned by Amasis, one of his own generals.
These circumstances show a remarkable parallel to the political situation with which Isaiah had to deal at the time of Sennacheribs invasion. Judah was again in the position of the "earthen pipkin between two iron pots." It is certain that neither Jehoiakim nor Zedekiah, any more than the advisers of Hezekiah in the earlier period, would have embarked on a conflict with the Mesopotamian empire but for delusive promises of Egyptian support. There was the same vacillation and division of counsels in Jerusalem, the same dilatoriness on the part of Egypt, and the same futile effort to retrieve a desperate situation after the favourable moment had been allowed to slip. In both cases the conflict was precipitated by the triumph of an Egyptian party in the Judaean court; and it is probable that in both cases the king was coerced into a policy of which his judgment did not approve. And the prophets of the later period, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, adhere closely to the lines laid down by Isaiah in the time of Sennacherib, warning the people against putting their trust in the vain help of Egypt, and counselling passive submission to the course of events which expressed the unalterable judgment of the Almighty. Ezekiel indeed borrows an image that had been current in the days of Isaiah in order to set forth the utter untrustworthiness and dishonesty of Egypt towards the nations who were induced to rely on her power. He compares her to a staff of reed, which breaks when one grasps it, piercing the hand and making the loins to totter when it is leant upon. Such had Egypt been to Israel through all her history, and such she will again prove herself to be in her last attempt to use Israel as the tool of her selfish designs. The great difference between Ezekiel and Isaiah is that, whereas Isaiah had access to the councils of Hezekiah and could bring his influence to bear on the inception of schemes of state, not without hope of averting what he saw to be a disastrous decision, Ezekiel could only watch the development of events from afar, and throw his warnings into the form of predictions of the fate in store for Egypt.
The oracles against Egypt are seven in number:
(1) Eze_29:1-16;
(2) Eze_29:17-21;
(3) Eze_30:1-19;
(4) Eze_30:20-26;
(5) Ezekiel 31.;
(6) Eze_32:1-16;
(7) Eze_32:17-32.
They are all variations of one theme, the annihilation of the power of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar, and little progress of thought can be traced from the first to the last. Excluding the supplementary prophecy of Eze_29:17-21, which is a later addition, the order appears to be strictly chronological. The series begins seven months before the capture of Jerusalem, {Eze_29:1} and ends about eight months after that event. How far the dates refer to actual occurrences coming to the knowledge of the prophet it is impossible for us to say. It is clear that his interest is centred on the fate of Jerusalem then hanging in the balance; and it is possible that the first oracles {Eze_29:1-16; Eze_30:1-19} may be called forth by the appearance of Hophras army on the scene, while the {Eze_30:20-26} plainly alludes to the repulse of the Egyptians by the Chaldaeans. But no attempt can be made to connect the prophecies with incidents of the campaign; the prophets thoughts are wholly occupied with the moral and religious issues involved in the contest, the vindication of Jehovahs holiness in the overthrow of the great world-power which sought to thwart His purposes.
Eze_29:1-16 is an introduction to all that follows, presenting a general outline of the prophets conceptions of the fate of Egypt. It describes the sin of which she has been guilty, and indicates the nature of the judgment that is to overtake her and her future place among the nations of the world. The Pharaoh is compared to a "great dragon," wallowing in his native waters, and deeming himself secure from molestation in his reedy haunts. The crocodile was a natural symbol of Egypt, and the image conveys accurately the impression of sluggish and unwieldy strength which Egypt in the days of Ezekiel had long produced on shrewd observers of her policy. Pharaoh is the incarnate genius of the country; and as the Nile was the strength and glory of Egypt, he is here represented as arrogating to himself the ownership and even the creation of the wonderful river. "My river is mine, and I have made it" is the proud and blasphemous thought which expresses his consciousness of a power that owns no superior in earth or heaven. That the Nile was worshipped by the Egyptians with divine honours did not alter the fact that beneath all their ostentatious religious observances there was an immoral sense of irresponsible power in the use of the natural resources to which the land owed its prosperity. For this spirit of ungodly self-exaltation the king and people of Egypt are to be visited with a signal judgment, from which they shall learn who it is that is God over all. The monster of the Nile shall be drawn from his waters with hooks, with all his fishes sticking to his scales, and left to perish ignominiously on the desert sands. The rest of the prophecy (Eze_29:8-16) gives the explanation of the allegory in.literal, though still general, terms. The meaning is that Egypt shall be laid waste by the sword, its teeming population led into captivity, and the land shall lie desolate, untrodden by the foot of man or beast for the space of forty years. "From Migdol to Syene"-the extreme limits of the country-the rich valley of the Nile shall be uncultivated and uninhabited for that period of time.
The most interesting feature of the prophecy is the view which is given of the final condition of the Egyptian empire (Eze_29:13-16). In all cases the prophetic delineations of the future of different nations are coloured by the present circumstances of those nations as known to the writers. Ezekiel knew that the fertile soil of Egypt would always be capable of supporting an industrious peasantry, and that her existence did not depend on her continuing to play the role of a great power. Tyre depended on her commerce, and apart from that which was the root of her sin could never be anything but the resort of poor fishermen, who would not even make their dwelling on the barren rock in the midst of the sea. But Egypt could still be a country, though shorn of the glory and power which had made her a snare to the people of God. On the other hand the geographical isolation of the land made it impossible that she should lose her individuality amongst the nations of the world. Unlike the small states, such as Edom and Ammon, which were obviously doomed to be swallowed up by the surrounding population as soon as their power was broken, Egypt would retain her distinct and characteristic life as long as the physical condition of the world remained what it was. Accordingly the prophet does not contemplate an utter annihilation of Egypt, but only a temporary chastisement, succeeded by her permanent degradation to the lowest rank among the kingdoms. The forty years of her desolation represent in round numbers the period of Chaldean supremacy during which Jerusalem lies in ruins. Ezekiel at this time expected the invasion of Egypt to follow soon after the capture of Jerusalem, so that the restoration of the two peoples would be simultaneous. At the end of forty years the whole world will be reorganised on a new basis, Israel occupying the central position as the people of God, and in that new world Egypt shall have a separate but subordinate place. Jehovah will bring back the Egyptians from their captivity, and cause them to return to "Pathros, the land of their origin," and there make them a "lowly state," no longer an imperial power, but humbler than the surrounding kingdoms. The righteousness of Jehovah and the interest of Israel alike demand that Egypt should be thus reduced from her former greatness. In the old days her vast and imposing power had been a constant temptation to the Israelites, "a confidence, a reminder of iniquity," leading them to put their trust in human power and luring them into paths of danger by deceitful promises (Eze_29:6-7). In the final dispensation of history this shall no longer be the case: Israel shall then know Jehovah, and no form of human power shall be suffered to lead their hearts astray from Him who is the rock of their salvation.
Eze_30:1-19.-The judgment on Egypt spreads terror and dismay among all the neighbouring nations. It signalises the advent of the great day of Jehovah, the day of His final reckoning with the powers of evil everywhere. It is the "time of the heathen" that has come (Eze_30:3). Egypt being the chief embodiment of secular power on the basis of pagan religion, the sudden collapse of her might is equivalent to a judgment on heathenism in general, and the moral effect of it conveys to the world a demonstration of the omnipotence of the one true God whom she had ignored and defied. The nations immediately involved in the fall of Egypt are the allies and mercenaries whom she has called to her aid in the time of her calamity. Ethiopians, and Lydians, and Libyans, and Arabs, and Cretans, the "helpers of Egypt," who have furnished contingents to her motley army, fall by the sword along with her, and their countries share the desolation that overtakes the land of Egypt. Swift messengers are then seen speeding up the Nile in ships to convey to the careless Ethiopians the alarming tidings of the overthrow of Egypt (Eze_30:9). From this point the prophet confines his attention to the fate of Egypt, which he describes with a fulness of detail that implies a certain acquaintance both with the topography and the social circumstances of the country. In Eze_30:10 Nebuchadnezzar and the Chaldaeans are for the first time mentioned by name as the human instruments employed by Jehovah to execute His judgments on Egypt. After the slaughter of the inhabitants the next consequence of the invasion is the destruction of the canals and reservoirs and the decay of the system of irrigation on which the productiveness of the country depended. "The rivers" (canals) "are dried up, and the land is made waste, and the fulness thereof, by the hand of strangers" (Eze_30:12). And with the material fabric of her prosperity the complicated system of religious and civil institutions which was entwined with the hoary civilisation of Egypt vanishes for ever. "The idols are destroyed; the potentates are made to cease from Memphis, and princes from the land of Egypt, so that they shall be no more" (Eze_30:13). Faith in the native gods shall be extinguished, and a trembling fear of Jehovah shall fill the whole land. The passage ends with an enumeration of various centres of the national life, which formed, as it were, the sensitive ganglia where the universal calamity was most acutely felt. On these cities, each of which was identified with the worship of a particular deity, Jehovah executes the judgments, in which He makes known to the Egyptian His sole divinity and destroys their confidence in false gods. They also possessed some special military or political importance, so that with their destruction the sceptres of Egypt were broken and the pride of her strength was laid low (Eze_30:18).
Eze_30:20-26.-A new oracle dated three months later than the preceding. Pharaoh is represented as a combatant, already disabled in one arm and sore pressed by his powerful antagonist, the king of Babylon. Jehovah announces that the wounded arm cannot be healed, although Pharaoh has retired from the contest for that purpose. On the contrary, both his arms shall be broken and the sword struck from his grasp, while the arms of Nebuchadnezzar are strengthened by Jehovah, who puts His own sword into his hand. The land of Egypt, thus rendered defenceless, falls an easy prey to the Chaldaeans, and its people are dispersed among the nations. The occasion of the prophecy is the repulse of Hophras expedition for the relief of Jerusalem, which is referred to as a past event. The date may either mark the actual time of the occurrence, {as in Eze_24:1} or the time when it came to the knowledge of Ezekiel. The prophet at all events accepts this reverse to the Egyptian arms as an earnest of the speedy realisation of his predictions in the total submission of the proud empire of the Nile.
Chapter 31 occupies the same position in the prophecies against Egypt as the allegory of the richly laden ship in those against Tyre (chapter 27). The incomparable majesty and overshadowing power of Egypt are set forth under the image of a lordly cedar in Lebanon, whose top reaches to the clouds and whose branches afford shelter to all the beasts of the earth. The exact force of the allegory is somewhat obscured by a slight error of the text, which must have crept in at a very early period. As it stands in the Hebrew and in all the ancient versions the whole chapter is a description of the greatness not of Egypt but of Assyria. "To whom art thou like in thy greatness?" asks the prophet (Eze_31:2); and the answer is, "Assyria was great as thou art. yet Assyria fell and is no more." There is thus a double comparison: Assyria is compared to a cedar, and then Egypt is tacitly compared to Assyria. This interpretation may not be altogether indefensible. That the fate of Assyria contained a warning against the pride of Pharaoh is a thought in itself intelligible, and such as Ezekiel might very well have expressed. But if he had wished to express it he would not have done it so awkwardly as this interpretation supposes. When we follow the connection of ideas we cannot fail to see that Assyria is not in the prophets thoughts at all. The image is consistently pursued without a break to the end of the chapter, and then we learn that the subject of the description is "Pharaoh and all his multitude" (Eze_31:18). But if the writer is thinking of Egypt at the end, he must have been thinking of it from the beginning, and the mention of Assyria is out of place and misleading. The confusion has been caused by the substitution of the word "Asshur" (in Eze_31:3) for "Tasshur," the name of the sherbin tree, itself a species of cedar. We should therefore read, "Behold a Tasshur, a cedar in Lebanon," etc.; and the answer to the question of Eze_31:2 is that the position of Egypt is as unrivalled among the kingdoms of the world as this stately tree among the trees of the forest.
With this alteration the course of thought is perfectly clear, although incongruous elements are combined in the representation. The towering height of the cedar with its top in the clouds symbolises the imposing might of Egypt and its ungodly pride (cf. Eze_31:10, Eze_31:14). The waters of the flood which nourish its roots are those of the Nile, the source of Egypts wealth and greatness. The birds that build their nests in its branches and the beasts that bring forth their young under its shadow are the smaller nations that looked to Egypt for protection and support. Finally, the trees in the garden of God who envy the luxuriant pride of this monarch of the forest represent the other great empires of the earth who vainly aspired to emulate the prosperity and magnificence of Egypt (Eze_31:3-9).
In the next strophe (Eze_31:10-14) we see the great trunk lying prone across mountain and valley, while its branches lie broken in all the water-courses. A "mighty one of the nations" (Nebuchadnezzar) has gone up against it, and felled it to the earth. The nations have been scared from under its shadow; and the tree which "but yesterday might have stood against the world" now lies prostrate and dishonoured-"none so poor as do it reverence." And the fall of the cedar reveals a moral principle and conveys a moral lesson to all other proud and stately trees, its purpose is to remind the other great empires that they too are mortal, and to warn them against the soaring ambition and lifting up of the heart which had brought about the humiliation of Egypt: "that none of the trees by the water should exalt themselves in stature or shoot their tops between the clouds, and that their mighty ones should not stand proudly in their loftiness (all who are fed by water); for they are all delivered to death, to the underworld with the children of men, to those that go down to the pit." In reality there is no more impressive intimation of the vanity of earthly glory than the decay of those mighty empires and civilisations which once stood in the van of human progress; nor is there a fitter emblem of their fate than the sudden crash of some great forest tree before the woodmans axe.
The development of the prophets thought, however, here reaches a point where it breaks through the allegory, which has been hitherto consistently maintained. All nature shudders in sympathy with the fallen cedar: the deep mourns and withholds her screams from the earth; Lebanon is clothed with blackness, and all the trees languish. Egypt was so much a part of the established order that the world does not know itself when she has vanished. While this takes place on earth, the cedar itself has gone down to Sheol, where the other shades of vanished dynasties are comforted because this mightiest of them all has become like to the rest. This is the answer to the question that introduced the allegory. To whom art thou like? None is fit to be compared to thee; yet "thou shalt be brought down with the trees of Eden to the lower parts of the earth, thou shalt lie in the midst of the uncircumcised, with them that are slain of the sword." It is needless to enlarge on this idea, which is out of keeping here, and is more adequately treated in the next chapter.
Chapter 32 consists of two lamentations to be chanted over the fall of Egypt by the prophet and the daughters of the nations (Eze_32:16, Eze_32:18). The first (Eze_32:1-16) describes the destruction of Pharaoh, and the effect which is produced on earth; while the second (Eze_32:17-32) follows his shade into the abode of the dead, and expatiates on the welcome that awaits him there. Both express the spirit of exultation over a fallen foe, which was one of the uses to which elegiac poetry was turned amongst the Hebrews. The first passage, however, can hardly be considered a dirge in any proper sense of the word. It is essential to a true elegy that the subject of it should be conceived as dead, and that whether serious or ironical it should celebrate a glory that has passed away. In this case the elegiac note (of the elegiac "measure" there is hardly a trace) is just struck in the opening line: "O young lion of the nations!" (How) "art thou undone!" But this is not sustained: the passage immediately falls into the style of direct prediction and threatening, and is indeed closely parallel to the opening prophecy of the series (chapter 29). The fundamental image is the same: that of a great Nile monster spouting from his nostrils and fouling the waters with his feet (Eze_32:2). His capture by many nations and his lingering death on the open field are described with the realistic and ghastly details naturally suggested by the figure (Eze_32:3-6). The image is then abruptly changed in order to set forth the effect of so great a calamity on the world of nature and of mankind. Pharaoh is compared to a brilliant luminary, whose sudden extinction is followed by a darkening of all the lights of heaven and by consternation amongst the nations and kings of earth (Eze_32:7-10). It is thought by some that the violence of the transition is to be explained by the idea of the heavenly constellation of the dragon, answering to the dragon of the Nile, to which Egypt has just been likened. Finally all metaphors are abandoned, and the desolation of Egypt is announced in literal terms as accomplished by the sword of the king of Babylon and the "most terrible of the nations" (Eze_32:11-16).
But all the foregoing oracles are surpassed in grandeur of conception by the remarkable Vision of Hades which concludes the series-"one of the most weird passages in literature" (Davidson). In form it is a dirge supposed to be sung at the burial of Pharaoh and his host by the prophet along with the daughters of famous nations (Eze_32:18). But the theme, as has been already observed, is the entrance of the deceased warriors into the under-world, and their reception by the shades that have gone down thither before them. In order to understand it we must bear in mind some features of the conception of the underworld, which it is difficult for the modern mind to realise distinctly. First. of all, Sheol, or the "pit," the realm of the dead, is pictured to the imagination as an adumbration of the grave or sepulchre, in which the body finds its last resting-place; or rather it is the aggregate of all the burying-grounds scattered over the earths surface. There the shades are grouped according to their clans and nationalities, just as on earth the members of the same family would usually be interred in one burying-place. The grave of the chief or king, the representative of the nation, is surrounded by those of his vassals and subjects, earthly distinctions being thus far preserved. The condition of the dead appears to be one of rest or sleep; yet they retain some consciousness of their state, and are visited at least by transient gleams of human emotion, as when in this chapter the heroes rouse themselves to address the Pharaoh when he comes among them. The most material point is that the state of the soul in Hades reflects the fate of the body after death. Those who have received the honour of decent burial on earth enjoy a corresponding honour among the shades below. They have, as it were, a definite status and individuality in their eternal abode, whilst the spirits of the unburied slain are laid in the lowest recesses of the pit, in the limbo of the uncircumcised. On this distinction the whole significance of the passage before us seems to depend. The dead are divided into two great classes: on the one hand the "mighty ones," who lie in state with their weapons of war around them; and on the other hand the multitude of "the uncircumcised, slain by the sword"-i.e., those who have perished on the field of battle and been buried promiscuously without due funeral rites. There is, however, no moral distinction between the two classes. The heroes are not in a state of blessedness; nor is the condition of the uncircumcised one of acute suffering. The whole of existence in Sheol is essentially of one character; it is on the whole a pitiable existence, destitute of joy and of all that makes up the fulness of life on earth. Only there is "within that deep a lower deep," and it is reserved for those who in the manner of their death have experienced the penalty of great wickedness. The moral truth of Ezekiels representation lies here. The real judgment of Egypt was enacted in the historical scene of its final overthrow; and it is the consciousness of this tremendous visitation of divine justice, perpetuated amongst the shades to all eternity, that gives ethical significance to the lot assigned to the nation in the other world. At the same time it should not be overlooked that the passage is in the highest degree poetical, and cannot be taken as an exact statement of what was known or believed about the state after death in Old Testament times. It deals only with the fate of armies and nationalities and great warriors who filled the earth with their renown. These, having vanished from history, preserve through all, time in the underworld the memory of Jehovahs mighty acts of judgment; but it is impossible to determine whether this sublime vision implies a real belief in the persistence of national identities in the region of the dead.
These, then, are the principal ideas on which the ode is based, and the course of thought is as follows. Eze_32:18 briefly announces the occasion for which the dirge is composed; it is to celebrate the passage of Pharaoh and his host to the lower world, and consign him to his appointed place there. Then follows a scene which has a certain resemblance to a well-known representation in the fourteenth chapter of Isaiah (Isa_14:9-11). The heroes who occupy the place of honour among the dead are supposed to rouse themselves at the approach of this great multitude, and hailing them from the midst of Sheol, direct them to their proper place amongst the dishonoured slain. "The mighty ones speak to him: Be thou in the recesses of the pit: whom dost thou excel in beauty? Go down and be laid to rest with the uncircumcised, in the midst of them that are slain with the sword." Thither Pharaoh has been preceded by other great conquerors who once set their terror in the earth, but now bear their shame amongst those that go down to the pit. For there is Asshur and all his company; there too are Elam and Meshech and Tubal, each occupying its own allotment amongst nations that have perished by the sword (Eze_32:22-26). Not theirs is the enviable lot of the heroes of old time who went down to Sheol in their panoply of war, and rest with their swords under their heads and their shields covering their bones. And so Egypt, which has perished like these other nations, must be banished with them to the bottom of the pit (Eze_32:27-28). The enumeration of the nations of the uncircumcised is then resumed; Israels immediate neighbours are amongst them-Edom and the dynasties of the north (the Syrians), and the Phoenicians, inferior states which played no great part as conquerors, but nevertheless perished in battle and bear their humiliation along with the others (Eze_32:29-30). These are to be Pharaohs companions in his last resting-place, and at the sight of them he will lay aside his presumptuous thoughts and comfort himself over the loss of his mighty army (Eze_32:31 f.).
It is necessary to say a few words in conclusion about the historical evidence for the fulfilment of these prophecies on Egypt. The supplementary oracle of Eze_29:17-21 shows us that the threatened invasion by Nebuchadnezzar had not taken place sixteen years after the fall of Jerusalem. Did it ever take place at all? Ezekiel was at that time confident that his words were on the point of being fulfilled, and indeed he seems to stake his credit with his hearers on their verification. Can we suppose that he was entirely mistaken? Is it likely that the remarkably definite predictions uttered both by him and Jeremiah {Jer_43:8-13; Jer_44:12-14; Jer_44:27-30; Jer_46:13-26} failed of even the partial fulfilment which that on Tyre received? A number of critics have strongly maintained that we are shut up by the historical evidence to this conclusion, They rely chiefly on the silence of Herodotus, and on the unsatisfactory character of the statement of Josephus. The latter writer is indeed sufficiently explicit in his affirmations. He tells us that five years after the capture of Jerusalem Nebuchadnezzar invaded Egypt, put to death the reigning king, appointed another in his stead, and carried the Jewish refugees in Egypt captive to Babylon. But it is pointed out that the date is impossible, being inconsistent with Ezekiels own testimony, that the account of the death of Hophra is contradicted by what we know of the matter from other sources (Herodotus and Diodorus), and that the whole passage bears the appearance of a translation into history of the prophecies of Jeremiah which it professes to substantiate. That is vigorous criticism, but the vigour is perhaps not altogether unwarrantable, especially as Josephus does not mention any authority. Other allusions by secular writers hardly count for much, and the state of the question is such that historians would probably have been content to confess their ignorance if the credit of a prophet had not been mixed up with it.
Within the last seventeen years, however, a new turn has been given to the discussion through the discovery of monumental evidence which was thought to have an important bearing on the point in dispute. In the same volume of an Egyptological magazine Wiedemann directed the attention of scholars to two inscriptions, one in the Louvre and the other in the British Museum, both of which he considered to furnish proof of an occupation of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar. The first was an Egyptian inscription of the reign of Hophra. It was written by an official of the highest rank, named "Nes-hor," to whom was entrusted the responsible task of defending Egypt on its southern or Ethiopian frontier. According to Wiedemanns translation, it relates among other things an irruption of Asiatic bands (Syrians, people of the north, Asiatics), which penetrated as far as the first cataract, and did some damage to the temple of Chnum in Elephantine. There they were checked by Nes-hor, and afterwards they were crushed or repelled by Hophra himself. Now the most natural explanation of this incident, in connection with the circumstances of the time, would seem to be that Nebuchadnezzar, finding himself fully occupied for the present with the siege of Tyre, incited roving bands of Arabs and Syrians to plunder Egypt, and that they succeeded so far as to penetrate to the extreme south of the country. But a more recent examination of the text, by Maspero and Brugsch, reduces the incident to much smaller dimensions. They find that it refers to a mutiny of Egyptian mercenaries (Syrians, Ionians, and Bedouins) stationed on the southern frontier. The governor, Nes-hor, congratulates himself on a successful stratagem by which he got the rebels into a position where they were cut down by the kings troops. In any case it is evident that it falls very far short of a confirmation of Ezekiels prophecy. Not only is there no mention of Nebuchadnezzar or a regular Babylonian army, but the invaders or mutineers are actually said to have been annihilated by Hophra. It may be said, no doubt, that an Egyptian governor was likely to be silent about an event which cast discredit on his countrys arms, and would be tempted to magnify some temporary success into a decisive victory. But still the inscription must be taken for what it is worth, and the story it tells is certainly not the story of a Chaldean supremacy in the valley of the Nile. The only thing that suggests a connection between the two is the general probability that a campaign against Egypt must have been contemplated by Nebuchadnezzar about that time.
The second and more important document is a cuneiform fragment of the annals of Nebuchadnezzar. It is unfortunately in a very mutilated condition, and all that the Assyriologists have made out is that in the thirty-seventh year of his reign Nebuchadnezzar fought a battle with the king of Egypt. As the words of the inscription are those of Nebuchadnezzar himself, we may presume that the battle ended in a victory for him, and a few disconnected words in the latter part are thought to refer to the tribute or booty which he acquired. The thirty-seventh year of Nebuchadnezzar is the year 568 B.C., about two years after the date of Ezekiels last utterance against Egypt. The Egyptian king at this time was Amasis, whose name (only the last syllable of which is legible) is supposed to be that mentioned in the inscription. What the ulterior consequences of this victory were on Egyptian history, or how long the Babylonian domination lasted, we cannot at present say. These are questions on which we may reasonably look for further light from the researches of Assyriology. In the meantime it appears to be established beyond reasonable doubt that Nebuchadnezzar did attack Egypt, and the probable issue of his expedition was in accordance with Ezekiels last prediction: "Behold, I give to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, the land of Egypt; and he shall spoil her spoil, and plunder her plunder, and it shall be the wages for his army". {Eze_29:19} There can of course be no question of a fulfilment of the earlier prophecies in their literal terms. History knows nothing of a total captivity of the population of Egypt, or a blank of forty years in her annals when her land was untrodden by the foot of man or of beast. These are details belonging to the dramatic form in which the prophet clothed the spiritual lesson which it was necessary to impress on his countrymen-the inherent weakness of the Egyptian empire as a power based on material resources and rearing itself in opposition to the great ends of Gods kingdom. And it may well have been that for the illustration of that truth the humiliation that Egypt endured at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar was as effective as her total destruction would have been.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain THE FIRST OF FOUR CHAPTERS DIRECTED AGAINST EGYPT (Chap.…
THE FIRST OF FOUR CHAPTERS DIRECTED AGAINST EGYPT (Chap. 29)
EXEGETICAL NOTES.—“Pharaoh, a monarch with whom the Hebrews were frequently in contact, is represented as vaunting in the security of his position, when the prophet is commissioned to announce the Divine interposition to effect the desolation of his country throughout its whole extent (Eze_29:1-12). Though after the lapse of forty years the Egyptian people were to be restored to their country, the kingdom was never to emerge from that state of degradation to which it should be reduced (13–16). The following verses (17–20), distinctly announce the conquest of the country by Nebuchadnezzar; and the chapter concludes with a promise of future prosperity to the Jews (Eze_29:21).”—(Henderson).
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Eze_29:3. “Pharaoh … the great dragon.” “Pharaoh was a general name of the kings of Egypt down to the time of the Persian conquest. A more appropriate emblem of these kings could not have been selected than that of the Heb. word tanim, by which we are to understand the crocodile, the terrible sea-monster inhabiting the Nile, whose usual size is about eighteen or twenty feet in length, but sometimes from thirty to forty. This animal occurs on Roman coins as emblematical of Egypt. The ‘rivers’ were the branches into which the Nile was divided, and to which the country was indebted for its fertility.”—(Henderson.)
Eze_29:4. “I will put hooks in thy jaws.” According to Herodotus crocodiles were taken with hooks (Job_41:1-2). In the Assyrian sculptures prisoners are represented with a hook in the under lip, and a cord from it held by the king. “All the fish of thy rivers shall stick unto thy scales.” “If the Nile denotes the prosperity of Egypt, the fish are its inhabitants living in prosperity, that feel themselves as fish when they are in the water, but now are placed on the dry ground. They are drawn out with the dragon; the subjects fall with the king, and in consequence of his fall.”—Hengstenberg.
Eze_29:5. “I will have thee thrown into the wilderness.” “The wilderness, in contrast with the Nile, denotes the state of weakness without help or means. The contrast is taken from the natural conditions of Egypt, where the waste, awful wilderness borders on the fertile banks of the Nile. The ‘field’ is the open field, in contrast with the splendid mausoleums in which the Egyptian Pharaohs were buried in the times of their glory. He comes down so low, that he does not even receive an honourable burial. Who would trust in a deliverer, and make him an idol, who cannot provide this for himself, who is destined to feed the ravens, and will very soon be carrion! The king is, so to speak, an ideal person, who comprises in himself a great numerical multiplicity. Thus the statement is appropriate: ‘Thou shalt not be brought together, nor gathered.’ Each of his deceased subjects was, as it were, a part of Pharaoh, as in the retreat from Moscow Napoleon was seen in every dead Frenchman.”—(Hengstenberg.)
Eze_29:6. “A staff of reed to the house of Israel.” There is an allusion to the reeds on the banks of the Nile, which broke if one attempted to lean upon them. (Isa_36:6.) Israel had trusted in Egypt, in many alliances, but found to her sorrow that she had leaned upon a broken reed.
Eze_29:7. “At a stand.” This describes the contraction of the muscles by the sudden pain. “It pierced through their shoulders, and made these, by injuring their muscles, ligaments, and joints, stiff and rigid, so that they could but stand and move no more. So fared it with the kingdom of the ten tribes under Hosea in connection with Egypt, and likewise with the kingdom of Judah under Zedekiah.”—Lange.
Eze_29:10. “From the tower of Syene.” Some translate, “From Migdol to Syene.” Migdol signifies a “fortress,” and was the name of a city lying to the north of Suez. Syene was situated in the remote south.
Eze_29:11. “No foot of man … neither shall it be inhabited forty years.” There would be no settled inhabitants. It this period began the year after the capture of Tyre, B. C. 572, it would end in the fifth year of Cyrus (B. C.532) Jerome remarks, the number forty is one often connected with affliction and judgment. The rains of the Flood in forty days brought destruction on the world. Moses, Elias, and the Saviour fasted forty days. The interval between Egypt’s overthrow by Nebuchadnezzar, and the deliverance by Cyrus, was about forty years. This prophecy is not to be understood to mean that literally no foot of man nor beast should pass through the land. The meaning rather is, that for forty years the land would be in the wilderness-state of social and political degradation (Isa_19:2; Isa_19:11).
Eze_29:14. “Pathros.” Upper Egypt, being the oldest part of Egypt, and from whence civilization and the arts had sprung. “A base kingdom.” It was to remain in a state of vassalage. Amasis made it dependent on Babylon, and under Cambyses it was humbled still more.
Eze_29:16. “Which bringeth their iniquity to remembrance.” The offered help of Egypt was a temptation which developed the iniquity of Israel, and made it manifest before the world. “Whosoever beguiles into iniquity, brings iniquity to remembrance, or to the knowledge of him to whom the iniquity refers. For existing iniquity cannot remain unmarked or unpunished by the ‘Judge of all the earth.’ ”—(Hengstenberg.)
Eze_29:17. “In the seven and twentieth year.” There is a departure here from strict chronogical order. This is the last of Ezekiel’s prophecies, and is dated two years later than the vision in Ch. 40. It would thus appear that the prophecies concerning foreign nations are grouped together in order to secure greater unity of subject.
Eze_29:18. “Every head was made bald, and ever shoulder was peeled.” With carrying baskets of earth and stones for the siege-works. “Yet had he no wages” He failed to secure results in proportion to the time and labour which he expended on the siege of Tyre. The Tyrians had carried away the greater part of their treasures in ships, so that little was left for the invader. The siege lasted thirteen years.
Eze_29:19. “It shall be the wages for his army.” “Jehovah, whose work he had performed, here promises to recompense him with the conquest of Egypt. On breaking up from Tyre he proceeded to that country, which he found so distracted by internal commotions, that he easily devastated and made himself master of the whole laud.”—(Henderson).
Eze_29:20. “For Me.” Nebuchadnezzar was the servant of God, unconsciously carrying out the purposes of the Divine will (Jer_25:9).
Eze_29:21. “The opening of the mouth in the midst of them.” “While Egypt was subject to eastern rule, the Jews were to be restored to their own land, and full liberty was to be given to the prophet to exercise his ministry among them. Sacred history is silent relative to the last days of Ezekiel, but there is nothing that militates against the supposition that he returned with his fellow-countrymen from Babylon”—(Henderson.)
HOMILETICS
(Eze_29:17-20.)
1. Men in misery keep account exactly of their sufferings. Ezekiel was in captivity, and many other Jews, who diligently heeded how the years passed. “In the seven and twentieth year,” that was of the captivity. Men are best chronologers in adversity.
2. When God is about to do great things, He usually makes His purpose known unto some of His servants. When He was upon destroying Sodom, He made it known unto Abraham (Gen_18:17); when about to destroy Eli’s house, He revealed it to Samuel (1Sa_3:11-12); the strange things which befel the King of Babylon were revealed to Daniel (Daniel 4); and the Lord showed John things to come (Rev_1:1). And here He hides not His purpose from Ezekiel. This was so frequent of old, that Amos said, “Surely the Lord will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret to His servants the prophets” (Amo_3:7).
3. Heathenish soldiers have hazarded their lives to please their heathenish commanders, and all for a temporal reward. The King of Babylon’s army served a great service thirteen years together; to lie before a city was hard, their heads were made bald, their shoulders were peeled, they laboured hard, carried heavy burdens, they watched, they suffered heat and cold, and all this for hope of good plunder in Tyre. If heathens would do and endure so much for their commander, who was an idolator, an enemy to God and His people, how much more should Christians do and endure anything for Christ, their King, and heavenly Commander. If He say Go, we should go; if Come, we should come. If He calls us to endure affliction, and suffer hard things, we should not stick at them, no, though it be the jeoparding of our lives, knowing He hath a spiritual and eternal reward for us.
4. Armies may serve long and suffer hard things, and after all be disappointed of their expectations. The King of Babylon and his army had no “wages.” They expected great matters in Tyrus, which was so rich, and full of all sorts of commodities, but found nothing considerable, nothing answering their expectation, or sufficient to recompense their charge and suffering.
5. Nations, lands, kingdoms, are the Lord’s, and He disposes of them to whom He pleases. “I will give the land of Egypt,” et. (Eze_29:19). He would take it from Pharaoh and give it to another. Neither did the Lord so any wrong unto Pharaoh, because he was tenant at will, and held upon these terms to be king while he carried himself well; but he grew proud, insolent, and like a dragon lay in the midst of his rivers, saying, “My river is mine, and I have made it for myself.” God therefore took his kingdom from him.
6. God, in His hold and wise providence, makes use of any instruments to do His work. The King of Babylon and his army were working for God. They were His servants, though they knew it not. God can make use of the worst of men as well as of the best. He can promote his interests by an army of heathens, as well as by an army of Christians. It is good, therefore, not to stick upon the instruments which work; but to consider in whose hands they are, and who regulates them.
7. The Lord suffers not any to labour for Him in vain. No even heathens and infidels, He gave the land of Egypt to Nebuchadnezzar and his army, who were the worst of the heathen (Eze_7:24), because they served and wrought for Him. When the midwives would not destroy the male children of the Jews, but save them alive, because they feared God, He dealt with them and gave them houses (Exo_1:17-21). Jehu was wicked, yet because he did the work of the Lord in rooting out Ahab’s family, in destroying Baal with all his priests and temple, therefore the Lord largely rewarded him (2Ki_10:30). If heathens shall not labour for God in vain, much less shall Christians, who know how to act from a right principle, in a right manner, and for a right end. If they meet with hardship in His service, He will remember and reward it fully, not with a temporal kingdom, but with an eternal. The Kingdom of Heaven shall be given to them (Luk_12:32). A cup of cold water, two mites cast into the treasury, a sigh, a tear, laid out for God and His interest shall not be forgotten. He deals bountifully with His servants (Psa_106:7.—(Greenhill.)
(Eze_29:21).
“I will give thee the opening of the mouth in the midst of them.” Ezekiel had been silent and dumb twice before (Eze_3:24; Eze_24:27). And here, God would give Him the opening of the mouth; by which we are to understand.—
1. Freedom of speech. Thou speakest things darkly now, with a trembling voice, but when these prophecies are fulfilled, and the horn of the house of Israel begins to bud, then shalt thou have more freedom of speech, and be troubled no more with the false prophets, which sought to disparage thee.
2. Matter of speaking. When Jeconiah, or Jehoiachin, should have his prison garments changed, and be set above other princes, some freedom granted to the Jews; here would be matter for praise and rejoicing.
3. Opportunity for speaking. When an occasion is given unto man to speak, the rabbins call that the opening of the mouth. Thou shalt come openly into the assemblies, having matter, freedom, and opportunity to praise Me. “They shall know that I am the Lord.” “They “refers not only to the house of Israel, but to the Babylonians also; when they should see the things prophesied come to pass, then they should acknowledge the Lord. The horn of Israel budded in the midst of the Babylonians, and the prophet’s mouth was opened in the midst of them. Therefore they should know the Lord as well as the Jews.
(1.) How low, weak, afflicted soever the Church be, God is able to raise it up and to bring it to a flourishing condition. The house of Israel was low, the horn of it weak and hardly visible; yet God caused the horn thereof bud. When we look upon some beasts, they have no horns; but in a short time their heads do bud and bring forth horns, which are their strength; so God in a little time would cause Israel to put forth strength and be once more prosperous.
(2.) However much the Church suffers from the calumny of others, God can raise up efficient advocates from the midst of His own people. Israel shall not be for ever crushed by the heel of the oppressor, or lashed by the tongue of the slanderer. She shall have power to plead her own cause. The sense of former injustice from her enemies and the knowledge that God is helping her will fill her mouth with eloquence. God opens the mouths of His servants that they may comfort His people, give praise to His name, and make Him known to the nations.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain Section 5 (Eze 29:1-21; Eze 30:1-26; Eze 31:1-18; Eze…
Section 5 (Eze 29:1-21; Eze 30:1-26; Eze 31:1-18; Eze 32:1-32).
Egypt: the abasement of creature-pride for ever before God.
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We have seen, then, the judgment of the world, as represented in Tyre, the merchantman, rich with all that man’s energy can pillage from the earth and use with the lavishness of a prodigal who knows not its value -use it also as the prodigal away from his Father’s house, and with no reference any more to that Father whom he has forgotten. We come now finally to look at the world in another way, in which however it closely connects with what we have had before. It is a fallen world in the one case and in the other, and the marks of the fall upon it are essentially similar. The soul away from God, having lost faith in Him., must needs have faith in itself, or there would be despair at once. Thus man’s competency comes in to meet the defect of God’s incompetency, and while taking freely what God has graciously bestowed upon him, he uses it to build himself up in pride and self-sufficiency. We see this unmistakably in Egypt, the lesson of which is as clear as it is fundamental.
Egypt is, as we have seen long since, the land of Mizraim -the double strip: that is, the strip on each side of the river, the overflow of which has formed and enriches it. Wherever we look at it, it is essentially the land of independence, as far as heaven is concerned. The rain seldom falls there; it is not expected. The sources of the river are necessarily in the heavens themselves, but so far off that they are no more thought of, or if speculated about, the speculations themselves are of no great consequence. The practical thing is that the river is there, always there, overflowing at a certain regular time most convenient for man’s purposes, giving him little to think about, only how best to guide hither and thither the supply which is thus made his own. Indeed be values himself upon this, that he can direct this abundant water with great wisdom so as to meet with it his own needs. Thus Pharaoh can say, as we see him here doing: "My river is mine, and I have made it." Practically it is the reverse of this, it is the river that has made him. Even the name of the first father of the Egyptians, Mizraim, is given to him, as one would say, by the land to which he owes his all: which is after all but the narrow strip through a desert in constant conflict with it, blowing its sand upon it in such a way as would soon annihilate the whole strip if it were not for the constant overflow of the river. Life is thus in perpetual conflict with death, and the Egyptians, one would say, were in a position to value life and enjoy it. No doubt in a way they did -yet from the earliest times Egypt was, what the earth at large very much is, a place of death rather than of life. Egypt is emphatically the land of tombs. Its literary memorial is a book of the dead. Their great men built their sepulchres with more extravagance than their palaces, for they realized that they were to use them longer; and, almost as if in mockery of themselves, they had their bodies embalmed that they might enjoy their sepulchres!
Thus if death is the stamp upon man’s fallen condition, it was not only over all the land of Egypt -it is everywhere -but was emphasized there in a most remarkable way. The very lesson that God would impress upon man, and would have him take to heart, he has taken to show how title his heart is impressed by it, for he remains the same vain, self-confident creature that he ever was. This, alas, is the fundamental moral condition of the fall. All blessing comes from keeping the creature-place, but there is this constant tendency to depart from it, God’s mercy being abused to that very end, as we have seen. Thus, in very mercy, must judgment come to abase the pride of man and give him wisdom in the only way possible. This, then, is what we find in the section before us. Egypt is everywhere in Scripture the type of that fallen condition out of which we have been redeemed; in this condition, he who has been awakened by the life-giving Spirit of God finds himself in captivity, and out of it he must be redeemed as Israel was redeemed out of Egypt.*
{* Tyre seems to represent the world in its intercourse and traffic; Egypt in its isolation and authority -S Ridout.}
1. We have, first, the causes of the judgment; they are, mainly, two: First, that pride and self-sufficiency itself, of which we have already spoken. Second, that Egypt has been a breaking staff to Israel; a staff of reed, which offered much, but never fulfilled its promises, bringing only ruin to all that trusted it. The going down to Egypt for help was the constant snare of the people of God, though they had been delivered from that land, and seen God’s judgment upon it in their own deliverance. Yet they could again and again turn back to it. Alas, it is an inconsistency which not one of us who knows himself can be a stranger to! Happy for those who are taught by any means at last to say, as the apostle says for Christians as such: "We are the circumcision who worship God in the Spirit, and glory in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh." What blessing is implied in such a condition, but how slow we are in reaching it! God must, therefore, for Israel, Himself break this staff that they leaned upon; and although He show mercy in the end, and Egypt is not finally left to judgment, as with Edom or Babylon, yet it must be henceforth a "base," that is, a low kingdom, something that will invite no more the confidence which it has hitherto invited, and be trusted no more by those about it. The lesson is as plain as it is fundamental. It is the lesson, "Cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted of?"
(1) The date of the prophecy is the tenth year, and the tenth month, the number of responsibility and of judgment being thus emphasized for us. It is given on the twelfth day of the month, the number which speaks of the manifestation of divine government, as it is manifested here. On this day, says the prophet, "The word of Jehovah came unto me saying, Son of man, set thy face against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and prophesy against him and against all Egypt. Speak and say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great monster that lieth in the midst of his rivers, who hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself." Pharaoh is likened here to the crocodile of his rivers, the "long stretched," as the word "monster" here literally means; a creature whom one might think took shape by his river, as the king of Egypt does -an unclean creature at the best; an ungainly one, however huge he may be, and however much the scales which shut him in may give him defence against all that may be adverse. He lies there, in no really exalted position, as is plain, and with little ability to survey things beyond the banks which on either side enclose him. Yet he can derive matter of boasting out of all this: "My river is mine own," he says, "and I have made it for myself." The ditches, the canals, the embankments and sluices are of his own manufacture truly, and this he calls making the river just as we think so much of the little we do, and so little of all that God has done for us. What a sight for the angels that excel in strength, to see a creature pinned to the earth that bears him, as the crocodile to his river-bank, and yet boasting himself to be in the place of God, and be his own god! And it was not Pharaoh’s boast alone, as we have sufficiently seen. A god to himself, he was a god also to his people, as is well known, whose fate is represented as identified with that of their king as the fish of the rivers sticking to his scales for all that he is to be brought out of his river, and in a way that will abase him utterly: "I will put hooks in thy jaws, and I will bring thee up out of the midst of thy rivers, and all the fish of thy rivers shall stick unto thy scales and I will cast thee forth into the wilderness, thee and all the fish of thy rivers thou shalt fall upon the open field thou shalt not be brought together nor gathered. I will give thee for food to the beasts of the earth and to the fowls of the heavens." No overthrow can be more complete. Thus, in another sense than that of Samson’s riddle, "Out of the eater comes forth meat;" he becomes the prey of those upon whom hitherto he had preyed.
(2) We come now to the second cause of the judgment, and we see how God takes up the cause of His people, foolish and perverse as they may have been. Had they not been sufficiently warned that they must not trust in Egypt? Were they not fully accountable in doing this after all the care that God had taken to deliver them from it? This Pharaoh, then, who has invited their confidence in himself which he cannot justify, who, as thus leaned upon by Israel, has given way under them and rent all their shoulder and lamed all their loins, he must be put into the place where he belongs, and God Himself must break the staff that has broken to His people’s hurt. The fertility of Egypt, proverbial as it was, must therefore be turned into deserts and desolation from one end of it to the other. Migdol was on the east border of lower Egypt, as Syene was on the border of upper Egypt, on the boundary between it and Cush, or Ethiopia. Not only would the desolation for a time be extreme, but the people would be scattered from the land, and the cities laid waste forty years.
The judgment here has raised an historical question of which the critics have naturally not been slow to avail themselves. We must remember, in thinking of it, that the reckoning of Scripture is not that in respect to time with which we are familiar. That the words here do not necessitate that the desolation must be complete, after the manner spoken here, for the whole forty years, is easily to be proved by what is undeniable elsewhere. In Gen 15:13, God speaks to Abraham of his seed being strangers in a land that is not theirs, serving them, and to be afflicted by them 400 years. And again we have in Exo 12:40-41, the time more precisely stated: "Now the sojourning of the children of Israel who dwelt in Egypt was 430 years and it came to pass at the end of the 430 years, even the self-same day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt." Thus complete accuracy is asserted. Yet, when we turn to the epistle to the Galatians, we find from the pen of one who certainly could not be ignorant or mistaken in what he asserted, that the law came just 430 years after the promise which God had given (Gal 3:17).
It is plain, therefore, that the 430 years are to be taken as from the promise, and that they define the time to which the captivity in Egypt lasted. Thus in the 15th of Genesis we must read this as meaning that the people should be captives to the Egyptians until 400 years from that time; the captivity is defined as to the end of it, instead of as we at first would naturally think, as to both ends. The forty years from the time of the prophecy here would reach to about the time of the overthrow of the Babylonian empire, the power of Nebuchadnezzar and his successors, until the Persian overthrew his city and his dynasty. That it is Nebuchadnezzar’s hand which God uses to inflict this upon Egypt is plain from what follows almost immediately and while the critics have doubted whether Nebuchadnezzar himself ever was in Egypt, we have now the proof from Egyptian and from Babylonian records together, that he was there twice; and it is even stated that the land was scourged by him as far as to Syene. It was completely in his hand.
(3) At the end of the forty years, God announces a certain measure of restoration: "At the end of forty years will I gather the Egyptians from the place whither they were scattered; and I will bring again the captivity of Egypt, and will cause them to return to the land of Pathros, unto the land of their birth, and they shall be there a base kingdom. It shall be the basest of kingdoms, neither shall it lift itself up any more above the nations; and I will diminish them so that they shall no more rule over the nations, and shall be no more the confidence of the house of Israel." This has been, as is well known, Egypt’s condition since. Under the Ptolemies, whether there might seem to be something more than this, it was the foreigner who had possession of the country, and Egypt has ever since been in the hand of foreigners; the more the power that reigned over them lifted itself up, the more was the burden upon the subject people.
2. We have now Nebuchadnezzar distinctly named as the instrument of this judgment, and this at a notable time. The prophecy, unlike the other prophecies with which this is connected, is stated to have been given in the twenty-seventh year, in the first month, the first day of the month. At that time, after thirteen years, siege at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, Tyre had just fallen; and the prophecy with regard to it which Ezekiel had thus made long before, was fully proved; God was manifested as He whose judgment it was, and in whose hand, therefore, the conqueror himself was. The "twenty-seventh year" may as a number refer to this. It is the number of divine manifestation cubed. The reality of God’s government was made fully plain, and here we have one of the various ways in which God would speak to Nebuchadnezzar himself, as is so manifest in the book of Daniel. As the head of the new Gentile power that God had raised up, Nebuchadnezzar as king of kings owed all to the Hand that raised him, and God would have him learn the lesson of this.
Thus, with the seal upon God’s word in what he had already accomplished, Nebuchadnezzar was to carry with him into Egypt an assurance which every step towards his full exaltation would thus confirm. Egypt was to be the spoil given him for his lack of wages in his service against Tyre. It was God’s work that he had been doing, whether he regarded it as such or no, and yet in the thirteen years of the siege in which "every head was made bald, and every shoulder peeled," he found in the end, very naturally indeed, nothing but a ruin left. Thus the land of Egypt would be given him as his recompense: "He shall carry away her multitude, and take her spoil and take her prey, and it shall be wages for his army."
The prophecy ends here, as far as Nebuchadnezzar is concerned, and the voice to him in it is unmistakable. In that day God would cause the horn of the house of Israel to bud forth, and He would give Ezekiel the opening of his mouth in the midst of them. The budding of the horn speaks but of partial and more or less slow revival for the people of God, which shows itself, in its beginning, in what the end of the book of Kings supplies as to the altered treatment of Jehoiachin, from whose captivity, let us remember, these prophecies are all dated, and who was brought out of his prison by Nebuchadnezzar’s successor and given a place above all the subject kings that surrounded him. Later, we have also Daniel’s exaltation, after a period seemingly of forgetfulness under Belshazzar and Darius, which was soon followed by the return of the people to the land under Cyrus. Thus the horn of Israel was indeed budding. In the prophets of that period, as Haggai and Zechariah, we have intimations of a further and more wondrous budding of the horn in the announcement of Messiah’s coming. Israel’s sins still hindered, as we know, and Messiah Himself came only to be rejected; but that belongs not to God’s side, if we may so speak, but to the people’s. The final visions of Ezekiel (Eze 40:1-49; Eze 41:1-26; Eze 42:1-20; Eze 43:1-27; Eze 44:1-31; Eze 45:1-25; Eze 46:1-24; Eze 47:1-23; Eze 48:1-35) had been uttered just before the prophecy which we are now looking at, the fulfilment of which, however, would now cause them to speak in such a way as to be heard, though, as we know, only by a remnant.
3. We have now still another prophecy, which is, however, but the detailed announcement of that judgment upon the land already declared. The day of Jehovah is at hand, a day of sorrow and distress: "A day of clouds shall it be, the time of the nations;" that is, the full time is at hand in which the judgment will be accomplished by Nebuchadnezzar’s hand which, as we have already seen, prepares the way for the full establishment of the universal Gentile empire. Egypt seems to have been the last of these nations to experience this; but with and in Egypt it comes upon Ethiopia, Phut and Lud, and all the mingled people, "the children of the land of the covenant" -apparently those Israelitish colonists of whom Jeremiah speaks, and whose judgment he also emphatically announces. Thus Egypt is desolate in the midst of the countries that have been made desolate, and her cities in the midst of the cities that have been wasted. Egypt’s end is the full tale told, and Nebuchadnezzar is again clearly announced as the one by whose hand it is to be executed. The points that are marked out here are naturally those which either set before us the idolatry, in Egypt so monstrous, and which God could never forget, or on the other hand, the symbols of her power and might, and her capitals upper and lower (No or Thebes, and Noph or Memphis) Zoan also, which God had plagued of old in Moses, time, having its place among these: the strongholds are gone and the land is open to all assailants. The picture speaks for itself, hardly needing a word of explanation. The purpose is here, as everywhere -whether men will listen or whether they will forbear -that they may know that He is Jehovah.
4. We have now another distinct, short prophecy, with regard to the incurableness of the breach which God has already made upon Egypt, evidently when they were defeated at the battle of Carchemish -a blow from which they never recovered. The prophecy is to forbid all revival of hope on account of the activity and energy which Egypt for the time was again showing. The effort to relieve the siege of Jerusalem is of course specially in view, and God announces that no bandage should be applied to bind up the arm that has been broken, so that it should be able to hold the sword again. On the contrary, He would break that and the other arm also, and cause the sword to fall out of Pharaoh’s hand. The Egyptians should be scattered among the nations and dispersed through the countries the king of Babylon is once more named as the instrument of this. It is striking how these prophecies follow one another, which shows the urgency, on God’s part, that His people should encourage themselves in no false hope. We can see how every blow upon such hopes was intended to fasten their hope upon God Himself; but how little will man listen to anything short of experience itself, hard teacher though it is owned to be! How we have again and again to hear the word "Cease ye from man," affirmed and emphasized by the event itself. How slow are we to come to that to which we must come finally, and which will have such abundant recompense for us!
5. We have now God’s governmental ways with the Assyrian as another lesson for Egypt. There was a strong link of connection between the lands themselves. Assyria, like Egypt, was as an oasis in the desert track which stretches across nearly the whole breadth of Africa and Asia, from the Atlantic to the China Sea; an oasis which for Assyria was made by its two rivers, to which it owed its all, as Egypt did to the Nile. Thus essentially dependent, as it might be seen to be, yet it was self-exaltation and not the sense of dependence that grew out of it. Thus in the end abasement had to follow, for God’s law is: He that exalteth himself shall be abased.
(1) The prophecy in this case is in the eleventh year, as was the last, and scarcely two months after it, On the first day of the third month, the word of Jehovah comes to Ezekiel, saying, "Son of man, say unto Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and to his multitude: Whom art thou like in thy greatness?" How gladly would we make ourselves the one exception, so that that which applies to others should not apply to us! God therefore points them to Assyria, a power as strong as Egypt itself. The rivers that had made him great were the rivers of that old Eden which had passed away, but which might seem to have revived again in him and such as he -though just such as he among the neighboring powers there was not. In Tyre, one might have seen again, as it were, the precious stones of Eden. In Assyria and the neighboring powers, the trees of the Garden of God might seem to have reproduced themselves in another manner, but all alike dwelt under the shadow of the one preeminent power which was the envy of them all. Like a cedar in Lebanon was he, with fair branches and a shadowing thicket, and of high stature. All the fowls of the heavens made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches all the beasts of the field brought forth their young so under his shadow dwelt all the great nations. No tree in this Garden of God was like him in his beauty. But, thus made great by the fostering care of God, it was only to repeat the old story; for what gift of God is there that man will not abuse? And what hope is there, one would say, for the being with whom God’s mercies are turned to evil instead of good? It is a terrible lesson, but so constantly to be learned, that the wonder of it is sadly lessened by familiarity.
(2) The contrast of his humiliation was now correspondingly great. He too had been given into the hand of Babylon, one who would make thorough work with him for when God has work to be done, He will see that it is done. As a consequence, instead of seeking his protection, the birds and the beasts would dwell among his ruins. All the peoples of the earth had gone down from his shadow and had left him and this was no inexplicable calamity, but a warning which the sure government of God preaches everywhere against pride, and which, if it were but for the moment, was felt by all around. In fact, were they not all following in the same path which could only emphasize the claim of Sheol upon them? -the claim of the unseen world which gathers men on every side. For the wheel surely turns, as Ezekiel has over and over again assured us, and he that is lifted up is exalted but for the moment, then must come down to the lower parts of the earth. True it is that, if we follow this out, we shall find that in God’s thought there is a resurrection also, and that whatever is permanent in blessing lies in this for us. But man’s view in general does not reach thus far, and where the lesson is not accepted, the blessing itself is not reached. God therefore challenges Pharaoh here. Sheol had its rights over him also, rights which in God’s judgment were already conceded, but he must "lie in the midst of the uncircumcised with those slain by the sword. This is Pharaoh and all his multitude, saith the Lord Jehovah."
6. We now come to the twelfth year and the twelfth month, a period which speaks of the full manifestation of God’s governmental ways. But with this, in which there should be only blessing, there comes instead a voice of lamentation, a reminder for us of those tears actually wept on earth by One who was the manifestation of God Himself in flesh, over those that had despised His gracious invitations, and would not be gathered under the wings that would so safely have covered them. The creatures that God has made must ever be objects of interest to Him -such interest as we little realize who confound so much the clouds and darkness that are about Him with the One who is distinct from the cloud and from the darkness, in whom is no darkness at all, and who has now made Himself known to us for that which indeed He ever was. Nevertheless, man may make void all this as far as he is concerned, and with his back upon God he sees Him but as reflected in the depths of his own heart, in imaginations darkened by a guilty conscience.
Pharaoh is seen in this prophecy in a double character. He is not simply now the crocodile lying in the waters; he has broken forth as a young lion of the nations, as for some time past Egypt had been showing unwonted activity in this way, and Pharaoh sought to imitate the action of his predecessors of old, and to make himself an imperial power after the fashion of Assyria, and now of Babylon. But in this, as we know, he was doomed not to succeed. Like the restless monster which represents him, he could only trouble his own waters with his feet, and foul his streams. God, in fact, was spreading His net over him, and the human instruments were but means in His hands by which He would bring him up out of his streams and cast him upon the open field, and fill the birds of heaven and the beasts of the earth with his great bulk; his flesh would lay upon the mountains and fill the valleys; his blood would water the land, and his dead bodies would fill the rivers wherein he had been swimming. All the bright lights of heaven would be made black over him, and darkness be upon the land through the darkening of sun and moon. This is the constant figure for the destruction of the powers which God has ordained for the preservation of order upon the earth. The darkness in which one could hardly find one’s way was the fitting representation of ensuing anarchy, and consternation would come upon all beholders; his fall would make all the nations around to tremble for their own lives.
Again it is announced that the sword of the king of Babylon is to do this, by reason of which the land of Egypt should be but a desolation, stripped of its plenteous fulness, its inhabitants smitten that they might know -if even yet they would know -that it was Jehovah’s hand. The prophecy closes as it began, with a lamentation.
7. One final prophecy now, a dirge over Egypt as gone down to the pit. We have still the twelfth year; and, as we may suppose, the twelfth month, and the fifteenth of the month, numbers in which the full government of God is seen displayed in judgment, for, alas, there is a monotony of judgment here. Nothing else can there be, for man’s wickedness permits nothing else! Sheol and the grave are now seen as receiving their claim, and the nations that have already passed into the shadow are those with whom Pharaoh and Egypt are now to be joined. Among these nations Tyre is not seen as yet; but Assyria, Elam, Meshech and Tubal, Edom, the Sidonians, are all seen as involved in one hopeless ruin. It is a judgment, as we see, not of individuals, but of nations -the judgment of the whole world, so far as it had yet come, as we may say, into the light of revelation -the circumcised with the uncircumcised; for Egypt was externally a circumcised people, but for whom it meant nothing; and now all together made equal in that which merges all distinctions, the common nervelessness and shadow of death. This monotonous dirge, the same for all of them, is part of the lesson meant by it -meant to impress us with the common blank and desolation in which so many energies, so many varieties of human character and activity, all come into one undistinguishable ruin. This is the lesson of death from which none is exempt, which God pressed upon man in that law which was the ministration of it, the common death and condemnation which man must accept in order to find blessing. It is therefore the natural end of all this part of the prophecy.
Thank God, we are going to emerge now into brighter things! But God’s lessons must be learned, and in their own order. There is no escape from this, and we have to have the sentence of death in ourselves, that we may not trust in ourselves but in Him who raiseth the dead. Resurrection is all of God. Here it is plain that man has no ability whatever; he is out of account, and thus God has freedom to manifest Himself as He desires to do; then the grave itself is no hindrance to Him, but rather the means of brighter display of His divine glory. Thus among the names here, Egypt herself is to have her resurrection and blessing in the coming day, and Assyria also, as Isaiah witnesses (Ezek. 19: 23-25): "In that day shall there be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria; and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria; and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians. In that day shall Israel be the third with Egypt and with Assyria, even a blessing in the midst of the land, whom the Lord of Hosts shall bless, saying, Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel mine inheritance."
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain § 3. Egypt (Ezekiel 29-32)
§ 3. Egypt (Ezekiel 29-32)
The most of this series of prophecies against Egypt are connected with dates during the siege of Jerusalem, the time when Ezekiel was silent as a prophet of Israel. They were therefore probably written rather than spoken. Ezekiel 32 is dated in the year after the fall of Jerusalem, and Eze_29:17-21 belongs to a much later time. In chronological order the series includes (1) the destruction of the crocodile (Eze_29:1-16), (2) the invasion of Egypt by Nebuchadrezzar (Eze_30:1-19), (3) the breaking of Pharaoh's arms (Eze_30:20-26), (4) the fall of the great cedar (Ezekiel 31), (5) two lamentations for Pharaoh and Egypt (c 32), (6) Egypt substituted for Tyre (Eze_29:17-21).
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The Destruction of the Crocodile
Pharaoh is compared to the crocodile of the Nile. God will drag him forth with hooks, and cast him, with the fish that stick to his scales, into the wilderness, as a punishment for his deception of Israel (Eze_29:1-7). Egypt will be desolate for forty years (Eze_29:8-12), after which it will be restored, but not to its former greatness (Eze_29:13-15). Israel will no longer place a mistaken confidence in it (Eze_29:16).
1. The tenth year.. the tenth month] January-February, 587 b.c., about seven months before the fall of Jerusalem.
2. Pharaoh] The king of Egypt at this time was Pharaoh-hophra (Apries): see Jer_44:30. He reigned from 588-569 b.c.
3. Dragon] the crocodile. His rivers] the Nile and its branches.
4. Fish] the subjects of Pharaoh. 6, 7. This was the constant character of Egypt in its relations with Israel. It incited Israel by promises of help to rebel against Assyria or Babylon, and failed in the hour of need: see 2Ki_18:21; Isa_30:7; Isa_31:8; Jer_37:7.
10. From the tower of Syene] RM 'from Migdol to Syene,' and so in Jer_30:6. The places named represent the N. and S. extremities of the country. Migdol was a town in Lower Egypt. Syene is the modern Assouan, in Upper Egypt.
11, 12. Forty years] a round number, standing for a full generation, as in Eze_4:6. The period represented Ezekiel's forecast of the duration of Babylonian supremacy: see Jer_25:9-11, Jer_25:19.
14. Pathros] Upper Egypt.
For Eze_29:17-21 see the end of the Section, after Ezekiel 32.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain tenth month i.e. January.
tenth month i.e. January.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain Ezekiel 29-30. First Egypt’s desolation is announced (Eze 29:1-12).…
Ezekiel 29-30. First Egypt’s desolation is announced (Eze 29:1-12). The king of Egypt addressed in this prophecy was Pharaoh-Hophra, called in Greek, Apries. He was the grandson of Pharaoh-Necho, who defeated King Josiah at Meggido 2Ch 35:20-27. King Zedekiah of Judah expected help and relief from Pharaoh-Hophra, when Jerusalem was besieged. The Egyptian army under Hophra advanced through Phoenicia and forced the Chaldeans to raise the siege of Jerusalem Jer 37:5-21. But the relief was only temporary, for the Egyptian army had to retire. The prophet Jeremiah announced also the doom of Hophra, associating it with Zedekiah’s doom: “Thus saith the LORD, Behold I will give Pharaoh-Hophra, King of Egypt, into the hands of his enemies, and into the hand of them that seek his life; as I gave Zedekiah, King of Judah, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, his enemy, and that sought his life” Jer 44:30.
But have these predictions been fulfilled? Did Egypt pass through a period of forty years’ desolation and did a restoration take place after the forty years? Critics claim that these predictions were never literally fulfilled and that Nebuchadnezzar did not invade Egypt during the reign of Hophra. They point to the historical evidence that Amasis followed Hophra as King of Egypt, and under his reign Egypt was in a very flourishing condition. The historian, Herodotus, gives this information, and it is fully confirmed by Egyptian records on monuments. But did the prophet Ezekiel predict that Egypt should be invaded by Nebuchadnezzar during the reign of Pharaoh-Hophra? His predictions of disaster for Israel by trusting in Egypt had been used by the Assyrian officer in addressing Hezekiah: “Now, behold, thou trustest upon the staff of this bruised reed, upon Egypt, on which, if a man lean, it will go into his hand, and pierce it; so is Pharaoh, King of Egypt, unto all that trust on him” 2Ki 18:21. And so it was. Egypt gave no help to Israel and only wounded them grievously, as a staff which breaks under the weight of him who leaneth upon it breaks and pierces the hand. Whenever God’s people turn to Egypt (the type of the world) for help, and form ungodly alliances, they do so to their own hurt and shame.
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Eze 29:13-16 predict a future restoration of Egypt. Isaiah also shows its future history, both in judgment and in blessing (chapter 19). Yet the prediction of Ezekiel that Egypt after the forty years should be restored and be the basest of all kingdoms and shall have no more rule, but be in a diminished condition, excludes the application of this prophecy to the coming millennium. Egypt had such a period of forty years’ devastation, though the exact history of it may not be known to us. Prophecy is not learned by historical events, but history is revealed in prophecy. We believe prophecies, not because history has measured up to them, but we believe them because they are the inerrant Word of God. After Egypt’s sorrowful forty years’ experience and dispersion, this proud country went into a steady decline, and the Word of God was literally fulfilled when it became the basest of kingdoms, so that Israel put confidence no longer in Egypt. After Nebuchadnezzar’s raid, Egypt declined and sank lower still under the Persians and the Ptolemies, until she became the granary of Rome. And this degradation has continued throughout the centuries of this age, so that Egypt is literally the basest of the kingdoms. That she will play her part in the future at the close of our age we learn from Daniel’s prophecy Dan 11:36-45. Egypt will rise into prominence ere long in connection with the present-day world conflict.
Then follows another prediction, the conquest of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon (Eze 29:12-21). This also was literally fulfilled. In chapter 30 we find first a prophecy as to the desolation of Egypt and her allies (Eze 30:1-13).
The prophet’s first utterance is concerning the day, “Howl ye! Alas for the day! For the day is near, even the day of the Lord is near, a cloudy day; it shall be the time of the Gentiles.” What day is this? Other prophets mention the day of Jehovah as a day of judgment and wrath when the Lord will deal in His righteousness with the nations of the earth (Isa 2:1-22, Isa 13:6; Isa 13:9; Joe 1:15; Joe 2:11; Joe 2:11; Joe 3:14; Amo 5:18; Amo 5:20; Oba 1:1:Oba 1:15; Zep 1:7; Zep 1:14; Zec 14:11, etc). This day in its final meaning is the day on which the Lord Jesus Christ will be visibly revealed from heaven. It is mentioned in the New Testament in 1Th 5:2; 2Th 2:2 (where “day of Christ” should be rendered “day of the Lord”) and 2Pe 3:10. This day will bring “man’s day” to a close and usher in a new age, when righteousness shall reign as grace reigns now. This day of coming judgment of all nations is seen also here in a prophetic perspective. All previous judgments of nations as announced by God’s prophet’s, nations which sinned against Israel the chosen people, foreshadow the one great day, when the times of the Gentiles end in the revealed manner Dan 2:34 Dan 7:10-28). What came upon Egypt in the past through divine judgment will happen to the Gentile nations in the future at the close of our age, “when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ” 2Th 1:7-12). Ever since the times of the Gentiles began with Nebuchadnezzar the divinely appointed head Jer 27:4-22), this day of the Lord has been drawing near, till now, with the stupendous present-day events, we can see this day rapidly approaching.
Two weeks after the lamentations over Pharaoh, the prophet uttered this solemn and most impressive elegy over the multitude of Egypt and the heathen nations who have gone into sheol. It has been called a weird Dantesque funeral march over the whole heathen world; but it is more than that. We look here into sheol and see the nations gathered there, stripped of their glory, in deepest abasement and shame. Their bodies are in the pit, the grave, and their souls in sheol, the unseen regions. God’s patience was exhausted with them, the measure of their wickedness became full; then judgments swept them off the earth and they passed away and descended into sheol. And what irony there is connected with it! “Whom does thou surpass in beauty? Go down and be thou laid with the uncircumcised.” And as the king came there with his multitudes, whom did they find there? Asshur, that is Assyria, is mentioned first: “Asshur is there and all her company.” She was a cruel, pitiless, destructive power, and now she, who once caused “terror in the land of the living,” is helpless, with all her power gone in the unseen world. Elam, Meshech, Tubal, Edom, the princes of the North, and the Zidonians are named as being in existence there. Once great powers, but now cut off, they lie with the uncircumcised in weakness and disgrace. While in Eze 31:16 the dead and gone nations were comforted over Pharaoh who descended into sheol; in this passage Pharaoh, who sees these nations, now is himself comforted as he discovers his former enemies there.
A similar statement about sheol as a place of departed nations, who are nevertheless conscious, is found in the book of Isaiah. There the king of Babylon is seen in his descent into sheol. “Sheol from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming; it stirreth up the dead for thee, all the chieftains of the earth, it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us? Thy pomps are brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols, the worm is spread under thee, and the worms over thee?” Isa 14:9-32. Solemn words these are behind which stands the undeniable truth of a conscious and eternal existence of the human race. But only the New Testament Scriptures give the full light upon the future state.
The destruction of the principal cities of Egypt is announced in Eze 30:13-19. All has been literally fulfilled. Noph is Memphis, the seat of the worship of Ptah and Apis. The city “No” is Thebes, the ancient capital of Egypt, called by the Greeks “Diospolis,” the city of Jupiter. Her ruins bear witness of the past, indescribable splendor. The great temple of Carnac stood there. The other places mentioned are Sin, which is Pelusium, now completely buried in sand. Aven is Heliopolis, the center once of sun-worship; Pi-beseth is Bubastis, where the sacred cats were mummified, likewise a desolation now. Tehaphnehes or Daphnis also passed through judgment. What a remarkable fulfillment of what the Lord had announced through His prophet! May we here be reminded in our solemn times that the same omniscient Lord, who knows the end from the beginning, has spoken concerning this age, now closing in its predicted apostasy. Nations today steeped in bloodshed; nations filled with covetousness and hatred; an apostate professing Christendom and the indifferent masses have written over against them the judgment-wrath of the coming king. And He who fulfilled the words spoken through Ezekiel will also fulfill every other prediction uttered by His holy prophets and apostles.
The chapter closes with a prophetic description of the work of King Nebuchadnezzar, whom God used to execute His righteous judgments.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain The Destruction of Pharaoh’s Power and the Subsequent Restoration…
The Destruction of Pharaoh’s Power and the Subsequent Restoration of Egypt
v. 1. In the tenth year, namely, after Jehoiachin had been deposed and led away into captivity, in the tenth month, in the twelfth day of the month, the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,
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v. 2. Son of man, set thy face against Pharaoh, king of Egypt, in a gesture which signified stern reproof and opposition on the part of the Lord, and prophesy against him and against all Egypt, the country being guilty with its ruler.
v. 3. Speak and say, in a message which was, in every word, the message of Jehovah against a heathen ruler who was guilty of so much wickedness over against the Lord’s people, Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, this special prophecy referring to Pharaoh-hophra, who then occupied the throne, the great dragon, the crocodile, type of the land of Egypt, that lieth in the midst of his rivers, the Nile with all its canals and the network of streams which compose its delta, which hath said, with the pride which sets aside the blessings of the one true God, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself, the Pharaohs from olden times considering themselves gods of the land and thereby heaping blasphemy upon the name of the one true God.
v. 4. But I will put hooks in thy jaws, as men did in the case of crocodiles, such rings effectually restraining the fierce reptiles, and I will cause the fish of thy rivers to stick unto thy scales, namely, the inhabitants of Egypt, who would, for the most part, share his fate, and I will bring thee up out of the midst of thy rivers, like a captured crocodile, and all the fish of thy rivers shall stick unto thy scales, and thus share the fate of their ruler.
v. 5. And I will leave thee thrown into the wilderness, far from food and water, the life-giving element in the case of these animals, thee and all the fish of thy rivers; thou shalt fall upon the open fields, literally, "upon the plains of the fields," far from food and nourishment; thou shalt not be brought together nor gathered, no one taking the trouble of picking up what was so deliberately cast aside. I have given thee for meat, that is, for food, to the beasts of the field and to the fowls of the heaven. Thus the prophet draws a very vivid picture of the destruction which would come upon the land of Egypt and its ruler.
v. 6. And all the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am the Lord, the one God who directs the destinies of nations, because they have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel, the latter’s dependence upon Egypt as a trusted ally proving hurtful to the Lord’s people instead of beneficial; for not only was the might of Egypt unequal to the task of protecting Judah against the mighty Eastern empires, but the idolatry spread by the Egyptians was a downright curse to the people of the Lord.
v. 7. When they took hold of thee by thy hand, in seeking the assistance of Egypt, thou didst break and rend all their shoulder, the broken pieces of the staff piercing through the hand and arm, up even to the shoulder; and when they leaned upon thee, in relying upon Egypt’s help, thou brakest and madest all their loins to be at a stand, that is, the firmness of Israel’s loins was so badly shaken that the power to stand upright was taken away. Egypt was not only an unreliable ally, but a menace of the worst kind.
v. 8. Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will bring a sword upon thee, in conquering and devastating warfare, and cut off man and beast out of thee, in a universal destruction.
v. 9. And the land of Egypt shall be desolate and waste, literally, "shall be for a desolation and a waste," and they shall know that I am the Lord, by the evidence furnished by his severe punishment upon them, because he, the ruler of Egypt, hath said, The river is mine, and I have made it, the Lord once more calling attention to this blasphemous statement.
v. 10. Behold, therefore I am against thee and against thy rivers, the chief source of Egypt’s wealth, and I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, literally, "I will give the land of Egypt to desolations of desolation," from the tower of Syene, rather, "from Migdol," the northernmost point of Egypt, "to Syene," on its extreme southern border, even unto the border of Ethiopia, the country which extended to the south of Egypt.
v. 11. No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited forty years, during which time the power of Egypt would be utterly broken, and there would be neither traffic, travel, nor industry.
v. 12. And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, in the general punishment which struck the lands at this end of the Mediterranean Sea in the Chaldean conquest, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years, for the time determined by the Lord, and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, so that they also would suffer the evils of an exile, and will disperse them through the countries, Egypt thus, as one commentator has it, being the caricature of Israel. Yet the mercy and long-suffering of the Lord becomes apparent also in this connection, and the prophecy takes a more cheerful turn.
v. 13. Yet thus saith the Lord God, At the end of forty years, the period determined by Him for the carrying out of His judgment, will I gather the Egyptians from the people whither they were scattered, in the misery of their subjugation and captivity,
v. 14. and I will bring again the captivity and will cause them to return land of Pathros, that is, South or Upper Egypt, with Thebes as its capital, into the land of their habitation, literally, "the land the of their birth," for the nation of Egyptians had their origin in this part of Egypt; and they shall be there a base kingdom, no longer a power of the first rank, but altogether subordinate to other nations.
v. 15. It shall be the basest of the kingdoms, instead of occupying the first position, to which it aspired; neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations, for I will diminish them that they shall no more rule over the nations, never again occupy a position which would cause others to look to it for assistance.
v. 16. And it shall be no more the confidence of the house of Israel, the fact by which the downfall of Judah was brought about, which bringeth their iniquity to remembrance, when they shall look after them, that is, the fact that the Jews turned to Egypt for help and sought deliverance with an idolatrous nation causes the Lord to remember that He was bound to punish them; but they shall know that I am the Lord God. It is always foolish, and usually disastrous as well, for believers to turn to the enemies of God for help and deliverance in any emergency.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 In the tenth year
In the tenth year
It can be stated clearly that this was the tenth year of Jehoiachin's exile. AT: "In the tenth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin" (See: Ordinal Numbers and Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
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in the tenth month on the twelfth day of the month
"on the twelfth day of the tenth month." This is the tenth month of the Hebrew calendar. The twelfth day is near the beginning of January on Western calendars. (See: Hebrew Months and Ordinal Numbers)
the word of Yahweh came
This is an idiom that is used to introduce something that God told his prophets or his people. See how you translated this in Ezekiel 3:16. AT: "Yahweh spoke this message" or "Yahweh spoke these words" (See: Idiom)
Son of man
"Son of a human being" or "Son of humanity." God calls Ezekiel this to emphasize that Ezekiel is only a human being. God is eternal and powerful, but humans are not. See how you translated this in Ezekiel 2:1. AT: "Mortal person" or "Human"
set your face against Pharaoh
This is a command to stare at Pharaoh as a symbol of punishing him and his people. Pharaoh was far away, so Ezekiel could not see him, but staring in his direction would be a symbol of harming him and his people. See how you translated a similar phrase in Ezekiel 6:2. AT: "turn toward Pharaoh and stare" or "stare toward Pharaoh so that he and his people will be harmed" (See: Symbolic Action)
prophesy against him and against all of Egypt
"tell the terrible things that will happen to him and everyone in Egypt"
the great sea monster
"the huge creature that lives in the water." Yahweh calls Pharaoh a monster that lives in the water. The monster is probably a crocodile. (See: Symbolic Language)
translationWords
year
day
Pharaoh
king
Egypt
prophet
declare
Lord Yahweh
Nile River
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 29:1–32:32 The climactic seventh oracle against the nations is…
29:1–32:32 The climactic seventh oracle against the nations is against Egypt, Israel’s old enemy and ally. This is the longest of the oracles, and like the oracle against Tyre it addresses both the land of Egypt and its ruler. • Egypt played a central role through the centuries in tempting Israel and Judah away from their allegiance to the Lord. Israel had no sooner departed from Egypt than Egypt’s idolatry became a snare for them. Egypt caused Judah to trust in chariots and horses instead of in the Lord, but Egypt proved unreliable when the moment of truth arrived. The Lord judged Egypt for tempting his people (cp. Luke 17:1-2).
29:1 This day in the tenth year since the exile of Jehoiachin was approximately one year after the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.