Yahweh’s word came again to me, saying,
“Son of man, prophesy, and say, ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “Wail, ‘Alas for the day!’
For the day is near, even Yahweh’s day is near. It will be a day of clouds, a time of the nations.
A sword will come on Egypt, and anguish will be in Ethiopia, when the slain fall in Egypt. They take away her multitude, and her foundations are broken down.
“ ‘ “Ethiopia, Put, Lud, all the mixed people, Cub, and the children of the land that is allied with them, will fall with them by the sword.”
“ ‘Yahweh says: “They also who uphold Egypt will fall. The pride of her power will come down. They will fall by the sword in it from the tower of Seveneh,” says the Lord Yahweh.
“They will be desolate in the middle of the countries that are desolate. Her cities will be among the cities that are wasted.
They will know that I am Yahweh when I have set a fire in Egypt, and all her helpers are destroyed.
“ ‘ “In that day messengers will go out from before me in ships to make the careless Ethiopians afraid. There will be anguish on them, as in the day of Egypt; for, behold, it comes.”
“ ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “I will also make the multitude of Egypt to cease, by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon.
He and his people with him, the terrible of the nations, will be brought in to destroy the land. They will draw their swords against Egypt, and fill the land with the slain.
I will make the rivers dry, and will sell the land into the hand of evil men. I will make the land desolate, and all that is therein, by the hand of strangers: I, Yahweh, have spoken it.”
“ ‘The Lord Yahweh says: “I will also destroy the idols, and I will cause the images to cease from Memphis. There will be no more a prince from the land of Egypt. I will put a fear in the land of Egypt.
I will make Pathros desolate, and will set a fire in Zoan, and will execute judgments on No.
I will pour my wrath on Sin, the stronghold of Egypt. I will cut off the multitude of No.
I will set a fire in Egypt Sin will be in great anguish. No will be broken up. Memphis will have adversaries in the daytime.
The young men of Aven and of Pibeseth will fall by the sword. They will go into captivity.
At Tehaphnehes also the day will withdraw itself, when I break the yokes of Egypt, there. The pride of her power will cease in her. As for her, a cloud will cover her, and her daughters will go into captivity.
Thus I will execute judgments on Egypt. Then they will know that I am Yahweh.” ’ ”
In the eleventh year, in the first month, in the seventh day of the month, Yahweh’s word came to me, saying, “Son of man, I have broken the arm of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Behold, it has not been bound up, to apply medicines, to put a bandage to bind it, that it become strong to hold the sword. Therefore the Lord Yahweh says: ‘Behold, I am against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and will break his arms, the strong arm, and that which was broken. I will cause the sword to fall out of his hand. I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries. I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, and put my sword in his hand; but I will break the arms of Pharaoh, and he will groan before the king of Babylon with the groaning of a mortally wounded man. I will hold up the arms of the king of Babylon; and the arms of Pharaoh will fall down. Then they will know that I am Yahweh, when I put my sword into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he stretches it out on the land of Egypt. I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and disperse them through the countries. Then they will know that I am Yahweh.’ ”
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 25 By Put and Lud are meant Africa and Libya.
By Put and Lud are meant Africa and Libya.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1–26 Eze 30:1 The word of the LORD came again…
Eze 30:1 The word of the LORD came again unto me, saying,
Ver. 1. The word of the Lord.] See Eze 18:1.
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 On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26 Howl ye, inhabitants of Egypt, and whoso are near…
Howl ye, inhabitants of Egypt, and whoso are near enough in friendship and alliances to fall under the like calamities.
Woe worth the day! Ah the day! O sad and miserable times.
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 On vv1, 20 The prophecy of the destruction of Egypt is here…
The prophecy of the destruction of Egypt is here very full and particular, as well as, in the general, very frightful. What can protect a provoking people when the righteous God comes forth to contend with them?
I. It shall be a very lamentable destruction, and such as shall occasion great sorrow (Eze 30:2, Eze 30:3): "Howl you; you may justly shriek now that it is coming, for you will be made to shriek and make hideous outcries when it comes. Cry out, Woe worth the day! or, Ah the day! alas because of the day! the terrible day! Woe and alas! For the day is near; the day we have so long dreaded, so long deserved. It is the day of the Lord, the day in which he will manifest himself as a God of vengeance. You have your day now, when you carry all before you, and trample on all about you, but God will have his day shortly, the day of the revelation of his righteous judgment," Psa 37:13. It will be a cloudy day, that is, dark and dismal, without the shining forth of any comfort; and it shall threaten a storm - fire, and brimstone, and a horrible tempest. It shall be the time of the heathen, of reckoning with the heathen for all their heathenish practices, that time which David spoke of when God would pour out his fury upon the heathen (Psa 79:6), when they should sink, Psa 9:15.
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II. It shall be the destruction of Egypt, and of all the states and countries in confederacy with her and in her neighbourhood. 1. Egypt herself shall fall (Eze 30:4): The sword shall come upon Egypt, the sword of the Chaldeans, and it shall be a victorious sword, for the slain shall fall in Egypt, fall by it, fall before it. Is the country populous? They shall take away her multitude. Is it strong, and well-fixed? Her foundations shall be broken down, and then the fabric, though built ever so fine, ever so high, will fall of course. 2. Her neighbours and inmates shall fall with her. When the slain fall so thickly in Egypt great pain shall be in Ethiopia, both that in Africa, which is in the neighbourhood of Egypt on one side, and that in Asia, which is near to it on the other side. When their neighbour's house was on fire they could not but apprehend their own in danger; nor were their fears groundless, for they shall all fall with them by the sword, Eze 30:5. Ethiopia and Libya (Cush and Phut, so the Hebrew names are, two of the sons of Ham who are mentioned, and Mizraim, that is, Egypt, between them, Gen 10:6), and the Lydians (who were famous archers, and are spoken of as confederates with Egypt, Jer 46:9), these shall fall with Egypt and Chub (the Chaldeans, the inhabitants of the inner Libya); these and others were the mingled people; there were those of all these and other countries who upon some account or other resided in Egypt, as did also the men of the land that is in league, some of the remains of the people of Israel and Judah, the children of the covenant, or league, as they are called (Act 3:25), the children of the promise, Gal 4:28. These sojourned in Egypt contrary to God's command, and these shall fall with them. Note, Those that will take their lot with God's enemies shall have their lot with them, yea, though they be in profession the men of the land that is in league with God.
III. All that pretend to support the sinking interests of Egypt shall come down under her, shall come down with her (Eze 30:6): Those that uphold Egypt shall fall, and then Egypt must fall of course. See the justice of God; Egypt pretended to uphold Jerusalem when that was tottering, but proved a deceitful reed; and now those that pretended to uphold Egypt shall prove no better. Those that deceive others are commonly paid in their own coin; they are themselves deceived. 1. Does Egypt think herself upheld by the absolute authority and dominion of her king? The pride of her power shall come down, Eze 30:6. The power of the king of Egypt was his pride; but that shall be broken, and humbled. 2. Is the multitude of her people her support? These shall fall by the sword, even from the tower of Syene, which is in the utmost corner of the land, from that side of it by which the enemy shall enter. Both the countries and the cities, the husbandmen and the merchants, shall be desolate, Eze 30:7, as before, Eze 29:12. Even the multitude of Egypt shall be made to cease, Eze 30:10. That populous country shall be depopulated. The land shall be even filled with the slain, Eze 30:11. 3. Is the river Nile her support, and are the several channels of it a defence to her? "I will make the rivers dry (Eze 30:12), so that those natural fortifications which were thought impregnable, because impassable, shall stand them in no stead." 4. Are her idols a support to her? They shall be destroyed; those imaginary upholders shall appear more than ever to be imaginary, for so images are when they pretend to be deliverers and strongholds (Eze 30:13): I will cause their images to cease out of Noph. 5. Is her royal family her support? There shall be no more a prince in the land of Egypt; the royal family shall be extirpated and extinguished, which had continued so long. 6. Is her courage her support, and does she think to uphold herself by the bravery of her men of war, who have now of late been inured to service? That shall fail: I will put a fear in the land of Egypt. 7. Is the rising generation her support? is she upheld by her children, and does she think herself happy because she has her quiver full of them? Alas! the young men shall fall by the sword (Eze 30:17) and the daughters shall go into captivity (Eze 30:18), and so she shall be robbed of all her hopes.
IV. God shall inflict these desolating judgments on Egypt (Eze 30:8): They shall know that I am the Lord, and greater than all gods, than all their gods, when I have set a fire in Egypt. The fire that consumes nations is of God's kindling; and, when he sets fire to a people, all their helpers shall be destroyed. Those that go about to quench the fire shall themselves be devoured by it; for who can stand before him when he is angry? When he pours out his fury upon a place, when he sets fire to it (Eze 30:15, Eze 30:16), neither its strength nor its multitude can stand it in any stead.
V. The king of Babylon and his army shall be employed as instruments of this destruction: The multitude of Egypt shall be made to cease and be quite cut off by the hand of the king of Babylon, Eze 30:10. Those that undertook to protect Israel from the king of Babylon shall not be able to protect themselves. It is said of the Chaldeans, who should destroy Egypt, 1. That they are strangers (Eze 30:12), who therefore shall show no compassion for old acquaintance-sake, but shall behave strangely towards them. 2. That they are the terrible of the nations (Eze 30:11), both in respect of force and in respect of fierceness; and, being terrible, they shall make terrible work. (3.) That they are the wicked, who will not be restrained by reason and conscience, the laws of nature or the laws of nations, for they are without law: I will sell the land into the hand of the wicked. They do violence unjustly, as they are wicked; yet, so far as they are instruments in God's hand of executing his judgments, it is on his part justly done. Note, God often makes one wicked man a scourge to another; and even wicked men acquire a title to prey, jure belli - by the laws of war, for God sells it into their hands.
VI. No place in the land of Egypt shall be exempted from the fury of the Chaldean army, not the strongest, not the remotest: The sword shall go through the land. Various places are here named: Pathros, Zoan, and No (Eze 30:14), Sin and Noph (Eze 30:15, Eze 30:16), Aven and Pi-beseth (Eze 30:17), and Tehaphnehes, Eze 30:18. These shall be made desolate, shall be fired, and God's judgments shall be executed upon them, and his fury poured out upon them. Their strength and multitude shall be cut off; they shall have great pain, shall be rent asunder with fear, and shall have distresses daily. Their day shall be darkened; their honours, comforts, and hopes, shall be extinguished. Their yokes shall be broken, so that they shall no more oppress and tyrannize as they have done. The pomp of their strength shall cease, and a cloud shall cover them, a cloud so thick that through it they shall not see any hopes, nor shall their glory be seen, or shine further. And, lastly, the Ethiopians, who are at a distance from them, as well as those who are mingled with them, shall share in their pain and terror. God will by his providence spread the rumour, and the careless Ethiopians shall be made afraid, Eze 30:9. Note, God can strike a terror upon those that are most secure; fearfulness shall, when he pleases, surprise the most presumptuous hypocrites.
The close of this prediction leaves, 1. The land of Egypt mortified: Thus will I execute judgments on Egypt, Eze 30:19. The destruction of Egypt is the executing of judgments, which intimates not only that it is done justly, for its sins, but that it is done regularly and legally, by a judicial sentence. All the executions God does are according to his judgments. 2. The God of Israel herein glorified: They shall know that I am the Lord. The Egyptians shall be made to know it and the people of God shall be made to know it better. The Lord is known by the judgments which he executes.
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 On vv1–26 The word of the Lord came again unto me,....…
The word of the Lord came again unto me,.... Whether this prophecy was delivered about the time of that in the former part of the preceding chapter, namely, in the tenth year, tenth month, and twelfth day of it; or whether about the time that was which is recorded in the latter part of the chapter, in the seven and twentieth year of Jehoiachin's captivity, is not easy to say; I am inclined to think it was about the time of the latter, since the time of the fulfilment of it is said to be near, Eze 30:3,
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 On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 25 The steps by which Nebuchadrezzar would destroy Egypt, ver.…
The steps by which Nebuchadrezzar would destroy Egypt, ver. 1-19. A repetition of a former prophecy against it, ver. 20-26.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 26 This chapter describes, with great force and elegance, the…
CHAPTER XXX
This chapter describes, with great force and elegance, the ruin
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of Egypt and all her allies by the Chaldeans under
Nebuchadnezzar, 1-11;
with an amplification of the distress of the principal cities
of Egypt on that occasion, 12-19.
The remaining verses are a short prophecy relating to the same
event, and therefore annexed to the longer one preceding,
although this was predicted sooner, 20-26.
NOTES ON CHAP. XXX
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv2, 5, 6, 10, 13, 14, 17, 20 Eze 30:2-4. Thus saith the Lord, Howl ye, &c.…
Eze 30:2-4. Thus saith the Lord, Howl ye, &c. — The prophet addresses the inhabitants of Egypt. Wo worth the day — Ah! the day: alas! what sad times are approaching. Even the day of the Lord — The time of God’s vengeance, wherein he will manifest his sore displeasure against Egypt and its allies; a cloudy day — A day that shall be dismal with calamities. Times of trouble have often this appellation. It shall be the time of the heathen — Wherein they shall be punished. Great pain shall be upon Ethiopia — Great trouble and distress; when the slain shall fall in Egypt — By the sword of the Chaldeans; and they shall take away her multitude — Shall carry multitudes of them captive to Babylon; and her foundations shall be broken down — Her strong forts and citadels; or her government, laws, and all the supports and defences of her commonwealth.
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 On vv1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 13, 14, 17, 18, 20 Third prophecy Ezek. 30:1-19 against Egypt, probably to be…
Third prophecy Ezek. 30:1-19 against Egypt, probably to be connected with the previous verses (compare Eze 30:10 with the Eze 29:17-21 note). Some consider it to belong to the earlier part of Ezek. 29 (compare Eze 29:10, Eze 29:12 with Eze 30:5-6).
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 On vv2, 4, 5, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 18, 20, 21 Day of vengeance, (Calmet) when the Lord shall judge,…
Day of vengeance, (Calmet) when the Lord shall judge, (1 Corinthians v. 2.) and Egypt shall fall a prey to the most powerful nation of the Chaldeans. (Worthington)
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 On v1 1And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying,…
CHAPTER 30
1And the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, 2Son of man, prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Howl! alas 3for the day! For near is the day, and [indeed] near is the day of Jehovah, a day of cloud; a time of the heathen nations shall it be. 4And the sword comes into Egypt, and there is anguish in Cush at the fall of the pierced-through in Egypt; and they take 5his tumult, and his foundations are pulled down. Cush, and Phut, and Lud, and all the strange people, and Kub, and the sons of the covenant-land, 6shall fall with them by the sword. Thus saith Jehovah, And they that uphold Egypt fall; and the pride of his strength comes down: from Migdol to Syene shall they fall in him by the sword, sentence of the Lord Jehovah. 7And they shall be desolate in the midst of the desolate lands, and his cities 8shall be in the midst of the wasted cities. And they know that I am Jehovah, when I give a fire in Egypt, and all his helpers shall be shattered. 9In that day shall messengers go forth from before Me in ships, to frighten Cush the secure, and there is anguish among them, as in the day of Egypt; for, behold, it comes. 10Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, And I make the tumult of Egypt to cease through the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. 11He and his people with him, the violent of the heathen, are brought to destroy the land, and they draw their swords upon Egypt, and fill the land with the 12pierced-through. And I give [make] the streams for drought, and sell the land into the hand of the wicked, and lay the land and its fulness waste by the hand of strangers: I, Jehovah, have spoken. 13Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, And I destroy the foul idols, and make the idols to cease out of Noph; and there shall be no more a prince out of the land of Egypt: and I give fear in the 14land of Egypt. And I make Pathros desolate, and give fire in Zoan, and do 15judgment in [on] No. And I pour out My fury upon Sin, the stronghold of 16Egypt; and cut off the tumult of No. And I give fire in Egypt: Sin shall writhe [for pain], and No shall be for conquest [broken], and Noph—besiegers 17[have] by day. The young men of Aven and Pi-beseth shall fall by the sword, 18and they [these cities] shall go into captivity. And in Tehaphnehes the day shall be dark, in that [when] I break there the yokes of Egypt, and the pride of its strength ceases in it: a cloud shall cover it, and its daughters shall go 19into captivity. And I do judgment in Egypt, and they know that I am Jehovah.
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20 And it came to pass in the eleventh year, in the first [month], on the seventh of the month, the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, 21Son of man, the arm of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, I have broken; and, behold, it is not bound up, that one might apply healings [means of healing], that one might lay on a fillet to bind it, that it may become strong, that it may take hold of the sword. 22Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I [come] on Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and I break his arms, the strong and the broken, and make 23the sword fall out of his hand. And I scatter Egypt among the heathen, and 24disperse them in the lands. And I strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, and give My sword into his hand, and shatter the army of Pharaoh, 25and he groans the groans of the pierced-through before him. And [yea] I take firm hold of [hold strong] the arms of the king of Babylon, and the arms of Pharaoh shall fall; and they know that I am Jehovah, in that I give My sword into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he stretches it out against 26the land of Egypt. And I scatter Egypt among the heathen, and disperse them in the lands; and they know that I am Jehovah.
Eze_30:2. Sept.: ... … ὠ ὠ ἠ ἡμερα, (3) ὁτι—Vulg.: … væ, væ diei!
Eze_30:4. … και πεσουνται … το πληθος αὐτης κ. συμπεσειται τα—
Eze_30:5. Sept.: Περσαι κ. Κρητες κ. Δυδοι κ. Διβυες κ. παντες οἱ ἐτιμικτοι ἐπʼ αὐτην … διαθηκς μου ἐν αὐτη μαχαιρᾳ— Vulg.: Aethiopia et Libya et Lydi et omne reliquum vulgus(Another read: וכנוב; Arab: Nubienses.)
Eze_30:6. Vulg.: superbia imperii ejus: a turre Syenes—
Eze_30:9. ... ἀγγελοι σπευδοντες ἀφανισαι … ἐν τῃ ἡμερᾳ— (Another read.: ביום, Syr., Ar., Targ., Vulg.)
Eze_30:11. αὐτου κ. του λαου αὐτου. Δοιμοι ἀπο ἐθνων—Vulg.: … fortissimi—
Eze_30:13. … κ. καταπαυσω μεγιστανας ἀπο Μεμφεως κ. ἀρκοντας Τανεως ἐκ γης Αἰγυπ. κ. οὐκ ἐσονται οὐκετι—
Eze_30:14. Sept.: ... ἐκδικησιν ἐν Διοσπολει Vulg.: … in Alexandria.
Eze_30:15. … ἐπι Σαϊν … το πληθος Μεμφεως … Pelusium … multitudinem Alexandriæ. (Another read: מעון )
Eze_30:16. Συηνη … κ. ἐν Διοσπολει ἐκρηγμα κ. διαχυθησεται ὑδατα Vulg.: … quasi parturiens dolebit Pelusium et Alexandria erit dissipata et in Memphis angustiæ quotidianæ.
Eze_30:17. … ̔Ηλιουπολεως … κ. αἱ γυναικες … et ipsæ captivæ—
Eze_30:18. …ἐν Ταφναις … τα σκηπτρα Αιγ—
Eze_30:21. Vulg.: … non est obvolutum ut restitueretur ei sanitas—
Eze_30:22. Sept.: ... κ. τους τεταμενους κ. τ.συντριβομενους—
Eze_30:24. ... και ἐπαξει αὐτην ἐπ̓ Αἰγ.κ. προνομευσει την τρονονην αὐτης κ. σκυλευσει τα σκυλα αὐτπς.
Eze_30:26. ... ἐπιγνωσονται παντες οἱ Αι̇γυπτιοι—
EXEGETICAL REMARKS
Eze_30:1-19. The Day of Judgment.
As this section is without any chronological preface, this may be understood if it justifies its place by the fit position of its contents. Thus the day in Eze_30:2 appears as the time of the heathen nations in Eze_30:3; hence it is quite suitable as an appendix to the outline of the prophecy taken as a whole (Eze_29:1 sq.). So, too, the sword coming upon Egypt (Eze_30:4) is more definitely indicated in Eze_30:10 sq., as through the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, and so Eze_30:20 sq. is prepared for. Not that “the naked thought expressed in the introduction to the prophecy (Eze_29:17-21), of the great catastrophe hanging over Egypt, assumes flesh and blood in the main body of the prophecy (Eze_30:1-19),” as Hengst. expresses himself; but the prophecy upon Egypt in Eze_29:1-16, primarily coloured by its reference to Israel, is now again coloured by the respect had to the heathen, in particular to the Egyptian covenant-associates.
Eze_30:2. Howl, Isa_13:6 (ילל, to sound). The sound is expressed by הָהּ,—like אְַחַהּ (Eze_4:14), especially with ליום,—in the word-sound. The day, therefore the time, when that takes place which is contained in Eze_30:4 sq., gives the reference (ל) of the mournful howl. The persons addressed will presently become plain.
Eze_30:3. Why they were called to howling had its ground in the nearness (Eze_7:7), which, however, has no chronological determination, except in the very near approach of the day. This is primarily designated as ליהוהיום, i.e. the one proper to the Lord, His day in particular, not only determined, fixed by Him; also not that alone which comes from Him; but, as the standing formula: “And they know that I am Jehovah,” readily suggests, the day of the manifestation of Jehovah. It is, as the comparison with Oba_1:15, Joe_1:15, Isa_13:6-9, Zep_1:7; Zep_1:14, shows, the becoming manifest in judgment. (Klief.: judgment, punishment, slaughter-day.) With this also agrees the designation of it as “a day of cloud;” comp. Eze_1:4. The symbolical import is obvious, since, when the clear light of day comes to be veiled, there is a threatening of storm (Eze_30:18, Eze_34:12; Joe_1:15; Joe_2:2; Zep_1:15); therefore one has to think of the wrath of God, and, in consequence thereof, a calamity which will break forth. Accordingly, עת גוים יהיה (without article) is self-determined, as meaning the time when heathen nations—they, consequently, are the parties addressed in Eze_30:2, spoken of generally as contradistinguished merely from Israel, but more definitely indicated in what follows—shall experience their judgment; not precisely “their end” (as Hitzig), but Jehovah’s manifestation in the judgment of wrath pregnant with calamity to them. Comp. besides, Eze_22:3; Isa_2:12. [Not “identical with the day of Egypt, Eze_30:9,” as Hengst. thinks, however similar, for the heathen were not simply the Egyptians. But still less, with Vatabl., Münst., and others, are we to think of the Chaldeans as executors of the judgment.]
Eze_30:4. The way and manner of the predicted judgment is here represented: the sword comes; and the heathen peoples, who are addressed in Eze_30:2, are now named, viz. Egypt, in which war or bloody uproar so frightfully raged, that in Ethiopia the impression made by it was חלחלה, the corporeal state of convulsive writhing, for: anguish, terror, and woe. Nah_2:11 [10]; Isa_21:3.—Upon כוש, see the Lexicons.—Hitzig: חלל alludes to חלחלה.—The subject to: and they take, is naturally: the enemies, considered indefinitely.—המונה, see at Eze_29:19. Hengst.: “this is here the prosperity of Egypt bringing with it active life.”—יסדות, the foundations, figuratively of the state as a house, not to be understood literally of the Egyptian chief cities. The figure, however, must not be limited (as שָׁתוֹת in Isa_19:10) to the higher classes, who bear immediately the state-building; nor must it (as Hitzig) be understood of the mercenaries, who only support Egypt (Eze_30:5-6), and could hardly be represented as the foundations of its existence as a state. The representation must undoubtedly be (as well remarked by Hupfeld on Psa_11:3) of that which bears the civic society and holds it up—ordinances and laws; so that, if formerly it was the well-being of Egypt which was concerned, it is now the being, the very existence of it.
Eze_30:5. Ethiopia, as already at Eze_30:4, instar omnium, named as the neighbour and political associate of Egypt, opens the array of Egypt’s supporters (Eze_30:6). Upon Phut and Lud, see at Eze_27:10.—ערב is: “joining-in,” “mixing,” “immigration,” therefore: strange people; scarcely (as the Syrian translates) could “all Arabia” be meant. Exo_12:38; 1Ki_10:15; Jer. 25:20; 24:1, 37; Neh_13:3. Häv. distinguishes these from the covenant-associates of Egypt. But what else could Cush be?—Kub, only here, is by some regarded as written instead of לוב, which Ewald reads, though he translates Nubia; while Kliefoth thinks of the Lubim in Nah_3:9, 2Ch_16:8, the Libyægyptii of the ancients; or taken instead of נוב, so Gesenius and the Arab. translation, “Nubians;” and Hitzig also supposes לוב to have been the older Heb. form for Nubia (?);—by others it has been understood (Häv.) of a people Kufa frequently occurring on the monuments of Egypt—according to Wilkinson, an important Asiatic people lying farther north than Palestine, with long hair, richly clothed, and with parti-coloured sandals; the tribute which they are represented as bringing bespeaks not a little of wealth, civilisation, and skill. Hengst. combines Kub with Eze_27:10, and makes it correspond to the Persians, who had entered in consequence of the coalition into the service of Tyre, and whose appearance here cannot be thought strange; everywhere where there was a struggle against the tyrants, mercenaries were to be found of this powerful aspiring people. The name was a domestic one—“Kufa” in old Persian = mountain; the particular region, as appears to Hitzig, to be sought in Kohistan.—The sons of the covenant-land are understood by Jerome, Theodoret, the Sept., the Arab, trans., also by Hitzig, of the Jews who had taken refuge in Egypt (Jeremiah 42-44.); the covenant-land (with the article), that promised to Abraham and his seed according to God’s covenant, is Canaan. The Syriac translation, on the other hand, points to the associates in the league, which the expression certainly does not clearly justify. Hence Hengst., understanding by the covenant-land Cush, makes the beginning turn hack to the close; while Schmieder, with whom Kliefoth agrees, conjectures a tract of land unknown to us, but near to Egypt, and in a state of league with it (!).
Eze_30:6. ונפלו סמכי׳, either as Ewald: “there fall Egypt’s supporters” or, after it has been said in Eze_30:5 that the anguish in Cush shall become a falling with Egypt, there is in Eze_30:6 a more comprehensive general statement: as well as, etc. [Hengst.: “a new break, new touches to be given to the picture.”] Comp. Psa_37:17; Psa_54:6 [4]. When the one party falls, the other sees itself necessitated to go down from its self-conscious height. On pride, etc., see at Eze_24:21; comp. besides, Eze_29:10. They who shall fall in him, or it, are those who would support it. Too far removed are the idols and princes of Eze_30:13, which are brought in by Schmieder as the supporters; also the fortified cities in Eze_30:15, and the warriors in Eze_30:17.
Eze_30:7. Comp. Eze_29:12. Where Egypt is the principal subject, there can be no question of its being so also here.
Eze_30:8. The practical knowledge of experience is made in the fire, which Jehovah causes in Egypt, that is, at the breaking forth of His anger, with which also most fitly suits: and they shall be shattered, etc., so that they must know the judgment of God to be upon them. According to others, the war-fire; according to the Chald. paraph., a people violent as fire; according to Cocceius, it must mean the consuming, desolating result of the war.—All the helpers of Egypt are those who give support in Eze_30:6, both those who are named (Eze_30:5), and those who are not named.
Eze_30:9. With manifest allusion to Isaiah 18, messengers in ships are made to announce to Ethiopia the fate of Egypt. (In Isa. it is papyrus-skiffs, which people were wont to roll together when they passed the cataracts of the Nile, and then open out again. The צי here, from צוה, to set up, according to Häv. certainly with reference to the existing sea-force of Egypt: warships, which suits neither with fugitives nor with messengers.) The business-mart and commerce on the boundaries of Upper Egypt and Ethiopia readily provide the image of such messengers at command,—represented as going forth from before Jehovah sitting in judgment upon Egypt,—so that one does not need to think either of the Chaldeans, or of Egyptian messengers formally sent by the Egyptians, or of Egyptian fugitives.—Since there is חלחלה בכוש, according to Eze_30:4, so this is only explained here by להחריד את־כ׳; hence also והיתה חלחלה is repeated; therefore not a joyful message, as in Isaiah 18. with reference to Assyria.—כיום, either, a definite fixing of time (Isa_23:5), as also ביום is read, but which would plainly be a repetition of ביום ההוא; or, better perhaps, with Häv., pointing to that old period of punishment in the history of Egypt which filled neighbouring regions with dread of Jehovah (Exo_15:14 sq.).—Eze_7:5-6; Eze_7:10; Eze_21:12. The coming is that which had been threatened, to be supplied from the context.
Eze_30:10. Comp. Eze_26:13.—Eze_29:19.—The tumult comprehends as well the dense population characteristic of Egypt, as the moving of goods and chattels hither and thither. Kliefoth; “the turmoil of the people in the possession and enjoyment of their goods.”—The hand of the Judge. His instrument and executioner, is to be Nebuchadnezzar (comp. at Eze_26:7).
Eze_30:11. Eze_28:7.—23.42. Hengst.: “they come not of themselves, but the Almighty brings them, hence they are irresistible,” etc.—The destruction of the land by the sword is more nearly given, since it is represented as being filled with the slain. Comp. Eze_12:14; Eze_11:6.
Eze_30:12. Eze_25:5; Eze_29:10; Eze_29:3. The destruction of its prosperity, since its natural springs and the land become the property of others, like a slave that has been sold by his master. Hitzig: “God assists the instruments of His will, taking an immediate part in the work of destruction, and, at the same time, displacing a hindrance to their advance and a bulwark of the Egyptians.”—Since רעים is parallel with זרים, the wicked can only be interpreted from the feeling of the Egyptians, and in accordance with the hurtful action of the strangers, as רעע is to beat down, to destroy. The general wickedness of mankind (Mat_7:11) lies here as far out of the way as a special application to the Chaldeans, as being also not better than the Egyptians. Comp. however, Eze_7:24; Eze_28:7.
Eze_30:13. A carrying out of the judgment by special traits, which for Egypt especially are characteristic. Thus, as regards the גלולים (see at Eze_6:4), the אלילים (chiming with the “nothings”), Lev_19:4; Lev_26:1, and often (1Co_8:4), so that there is no need for supplying from Isa_19:1; they are neither the images of the gods, nor the worshippers of them (as the Chald. paraph.): it is simply the idol-gods.—From Noph (מנף, sometimes also מֹף), that is, from Memphis; to-day, unimportant ruins on the western side of the Nile. The name in Plutarch is explained as ὁρμον ἀγαθων, and as ταφον ̓ Οσιρδος; in hieroglyphics, “Mam-Phtah” that is, the place of Vulcan. The lower valley of the river honoured as the highest god Phtah (fire-god), the oldest and first of the gods, according to Manetho, ruling 9000 years before the others, as he is named in the inscriptions: “the father of the fathers of the gods,” “the heavenly ruler,” “the lord of the gracious countenance,” “the king of both worlds,” “the lord (the father) of truth.” As god of the beginning, he has the form of a naked child, of a dwarf; at other times wrapped round mummy-like, standing by a rod, with a flagellum and mace and the Nilometer in his hand. As he was called Tatamen (the former), as world-creator, so he commonly has before him an egg upon a potter’s wheel (“the weaver of the beginnings moving the egg of the sun and moon”). The Egyptian scarabæus (beetle) was sacred to him, which was sometimes shown upon his shoulders in the place of a head. His great sanctuary at Memphis, which was said to have been as old as Egypt itself, was adorned and extended by the Pharaohs down to the overthrow of the kingdom. Cambyses, when admitted into this temple, exhibited his disdain toward the image of the god.—Since Memphis was at the same time the old royal city, the transition from the service of idols to the נָשִׂיא was natural, especially as the connection of the gods and kings is genuinely Egyptian. Comp. on Ezekiel 29. The history of Egypt is that of its gods, and the names and deeds of its kings, as they are painted upon the walls of its temples.—That there was to be no more a native prince is not necessarily said, with מאר׳, but only that as prince there should no more be one like the old Pharaohs and the Egyptian gods, out of Egypt, as contradistinguished from other lands, whose princely power would, as hitherto has been the case, obtain legitimation. Therewith also agrees the fear, which seems to point to a foreign ascendency that was to carry it over all.
Eze_30:14. From Lower to Upper Egypt, the description gives prominence especially to the mother-land (see on Eze_29:14), the brrth-land of the people.—Comp. Eze_30:8.—Zoan, however, is, again, in Lower Egypt, the old Tanis, on the branch of the Nile which bears that name (“Dschane,” Egyptian: low ground),—a chief city, Num_13:22; Psa_78:12; Psa_78:43.—Eze_5:10.—No (נא) leads back to Upper Egypt; when fully read No-Amon, it is Thebes (Vulg., anticipating, Alexandria), the very ancient Upper Egyptian chief city, with the Greeks Diospolis. (“Noh,” Egyp.: surveyor’s chain; hence: inheritance; therefore: seat of Amon—see Gesen. Lex.) In the Upper land there reigned as divinity Amun (Amen), probably = “the concealed,” the reigning god in the height, whose colour is blue on the monuments. He was for Upper Egypt what Phtah was for Lower Egypt. He is represented as standing, or sitting enthroned, with two high feathers upon his kingly head-dress. According to Manetho, the union of Egypt under a great dominion was effected by Menes from This, below Thebes, therefore proceeding from the Upper land—although this state-life had its centre in Memphis, in the Lower land; and during its flourishing period, another dominion, the territory of which stretched beyond the cataracts of Syene, had been founded at Thebes. Princes of Thebes afterwards ruled over all Egypt, took their seat at Memphis, and the kings of Egypt were now called “Lords of both Lands” in the inscriptions. Upon the monuments the red higher crown is that of Upper Egypt, the lower white one that of Lower Egypt. So that the prophetic representation takes into view the whole of Egypt, repeats Thebes for Upper Egypt, yet knows, at the same time, to mention names mostly from the more extensive, as well as more important and more powerful, Lower country.
Eze_30:15. Eze_14:19, 21:36 [Eze_21:31], Eze_9:8, Eze_7:8.—סִין, the “mud-city,” Pelusium (πηλος), a border city on the east, in a swampy region, which the sea now overflows. Egypt, according to Strabo, was here difficult to be attacked, and Suidas designates Pelusium the key of Egypt for ingress and egress.—מָעוֹן, ch.Eze_24:25.—וְהִכרַתּי Eze_29:8.—אֶת־הֵַמוֹן נֹא (Eze_30:10), comp. Eze_30:14. An allusion undoubtedly to Amon, whence No derived its surname (Jer_46:25). Amon is incapable of preserving to the city its Hamon (tumult), Hengst. The mention of the multitude of people in No Hitzig finds to be suitable, since the population of the Thebaid crowded principally into the farextending chief city. (Comp. Iliad, ix. 381 sq.)
Eze_30:16, Eze_30:8; Eze_30:14.—Instead of: תָּחִיל, the Qeri has:תָּחוּל, from חול, whence חַלְחָלָה in vers.4, 9.—The repeated mention of Sin, No, and Noph gives emphasis to the boundaries, Upper and Lower Egypt.—תִּבָּקע = תהיה להבקע, in Eze_26:10.—צָרֵי יוֹמָם is clear so far, as צור is plainly to be understood of a pressing, closing in siege; on the other hand, יומם may signify by day, as in the well-known juxtaposition with ולילה, but also what this juxtaposition paraphrastically expresses, namely: always, unceasingly, therefore: daily = כל־יום, or “the day over”, also “the whole day long” = כל־היום (comp. Psa_13:3 [2]). [Michlal Zophi interprets: “and against Noph come the enemies of day,” that is, openly, not as thieves of the night. Similarly Hitzig: “enemies will be in broad daylight,” meaning that it will be filled by them. Kliefoth: of the enemy not fearing an open assault. Also Hengst., who, from Jer_15:8 and Zep_2:4, understands it of a state of deep humiliation, in which the enemy disdains, in the consciousness of his absolute superiority, to surprise by night (Oba_1:5). “Enemies (besiegers) by day, a concise expression for: such an one as has to deal with enemies by day.”]—It might be also an affecting exclamation. [Abendana (after Job_3:5) = their day will be distress (Vulg.). The Chaldee paraphrase: enemies compass her daily. Peculiar are the renderings of the Sept. and of the Arabic, which understand it of a breaking down of the Nile dams, and a rushing in of the waters; the Syriac: “will give way into fragments.” Ewald: Memphis will be for perpetual rust (צְדִי)! Häv.: Memphis shall become a constant splitting, that is, shall be for ever shattered; it shall now be, in a manner, called צרי יומם, in allusion to the local name of Memphis, מצור!]
Eze_30:17. בַּחְוּרֵי, the choice young men of war (Mar_14:51); rightly Hitzig: the garrison warrior-caste), as contradistinguished from the inhabitants.—Aven (אָוֶן), the purpose in the change of the name אֹן ,אוֹן, must, according to Hengst., point to the cause of the divine judgments which were coming on it (comp. Hos_4:15; Hos_10:5). Aven is nothingness, vanity, with respect to the worship of idols. [Hengst.: “vileness”, that people serve the creature more than the Creator.] It was the Greek Heliopolis, Jer_43:13, “House of the Sun;” Kopt. On; Egyptian, Anu,—a city in Lower Egypt on the east bank of the Nile, and was from of old the proper seat of the Egyptian sun-worship; a centre of idolatry, with a numerous learned priesthood; the principal city in this respect, and that where Plato and Herodotus received instruction; mentioned in Gen_41:45; Gen_41:50. Now there are only some ruins beside a village, with an obelisk seventy feet high of red granite. Here, in a famous temple, was Ra, the god of the solar disc, worshipped (“the father of the gods”), the second ruler of the world. His symbol was the sun’s disc borne by two wings; the beasts sacred to him were the sparrow-hawk, the light-coloured bull, and the cat. From Ra, their original and type, the Pharaohs derived their power over Egypt, as “sons of Ra”, the name given to them. See, besides, in Duncker, 1. p. 39 sq.—Pi-beseth, only here; at present existing merely as ruins; Kopt.: Poubast, “the cat,” on account of the goddess Pacht (Basht, Pascht), commonly represented with a cat’s head, who was worshipped at Bubastis, in Lower Egypt, on the Pelusian branch of the Nile. (She was also named “the Mistress of Memphis,” and also “Mother.”) To her joyous service, according to Herodotus, was devoted the most pleasant of Egyptian temples. At her festival, to which men and women came in boats from all places, amid song, playing of flutes, clapping of hands, and striking of rattles, more wine was drunk than in all the rest of the year.—If the guardians, the protectors of the sanctuaries, fall by the sword, then also by the same must the gods themselves fall. Herodotus designates the Bubastic Nome as the region where especially resided the Calastrians, that is, the young recruits of the army. Comp. also Eze_30:5-6, Eze_6:11-12. The וְהֵנָּה are not the women (Sept.), but the cities named, their inhabitants (comp. Eze_30:18); see also Eze_12:11.
Eze_30:18. Not far from Sin comes the border city (toward Syria) תְּחַפְנְחֵם, Tehaphnehes, in Jeremiah (Jer. 63:9) תַּחְפַּנְחֵם, Tahpanhes, where, as we there learn, was a royal palace, Daphnoi (Taphne); the name, according to Jablonski, Egyptian: Taphe-eneh, as much as, Land’s End.—חשך היום, Hengst.: “the day spares, withholds as a miser.” Therefore, from חָשַׂך, which in substance, however, is the same as: darkens itself; from חָשַׁך, to be darkened. There, for those of Israel who had fled thither (Jer_43:7 sq., Eze_44:1 sq.), the pre-intimations of the day of judgment begin (Kl.); or generally: there changes the prosperity and splendour of Egypt; according to others: there will be mourning. Häv.: “here had Jeremiah spoken his powerful word of threatening against Egypt; here, through the settling down of the Jews at that time, the idea of Egyptian oppression toward Israel springs up afresh; and hence a calling to remembrance of Lev_26:13.” Hengst. compares with “the breaking of the yokes of Egypt” Eze_29:15; Eze_30:13, “no prince,” etc.; the yoke formerly lying upon Israel, latterly also upon other nations, was now to be for ever broken.—שָׁם refers to the border-place, with which the land opens, and with the broken land “the yokes” which Egypt had imposed, consequently its dominion (comp. Eze_30:21-22; Eze_30:24), should be broken. (Umbr.: “All order and discipline shall be dissolved in the ruled and strongly-curbed land: an end shall be made to its old renown and pride.”)—בָּהּ, like גְּאוֹן עֻוָּהּ, is to be understood of the whole land. [Cocceius thinks of the death of the king with reference to the king’s seat at Taphne (Jer. 63:9). Rosenm. reads מַטּוֹת, also Ewald and the Sept.; while Hitzig supposes to be meant, not the spears indeed (Hab_3:14; 2Sa_18:14), but the supporting staffs, Eze_30:6, which in Eze_30:8 are also represented as going to be broken.]—היא, not Daphnai, but Egypt, on which account it precedes emphatically; as also her daughters, namely, the cities, could only be referred to Egypt; if referred to Daphnai, too much would be said for it (Eze_16:27; Eze_16:31; Eze_16:46; Eze_26:6).—עָנָן (Eze_30:3). The Chaldee Paraphrast makes the cloud mean the host of the king of Babylon.
Eze_30:19 concludes with Egypt generally.
Eze_30:14.
Eze_30:20-26. Pharaoh and the King of Babylon.
Eze_30:20. As to the time, almost a quarter of a year later than Eze_29:1 sq.; Kliefoth: “in the second year of the siege of Jerusalem,” as is clear also from Eze_30:21, after that Hophra had been defeated by the Chaldeans (Jer_37:5; Jer_37:7). (That Ezekiel 29. should contain no notice or allusion to the attempt of Pharaoh to bring help to Jerusalem, etc., may be controverted from what is said there in Eze_30:6.) Hengst.: about three months later followed the conquest of Jerusalem (Jer_39:2). As at Ezekiel 29, so also here, the look of the exiled toward Egypt is to be turned back from it.
Eze_30:21. זְרוֹעַ is certainly for the most part the forearm, as here also the expression “to hold the sword” proves, and so help, too, assistance, is expressed by it; so that, with Häv., Ewald, and others, one might think of the Egyptian attempt for the relief of Jerusalem: on the other hand, however, Hengst. is right when he explains the breaking of the arm of Pharaoh of a “great overthrow,” such as was only to be found in the well-known disaster at Carchemish, seventeen years before our prophecy, as this battle, in fact, destroyed the power of Pharaoh to make war, struck his might with a blow (comp. Jeremiah 46.); while what respects the retreat of the Egyptians from Jerusalem, which became a matter of necessity to them, is nowhere reported. So that, as Hitzig in particular recognises, from the manifest contrariety of Eze_30:22, which announces the future, שברתי is a full preterite, and presupposes a longer interval in connection with the indication of time in Eze_30:20 than could be the case with that retreat before Nebuchadnezzar, if this should have to be thought of generally as a thing already accomplished. Hengst. remarks: “After it (i.e., the retreat of the Egyptians from Carchemish) our prophecy would have been unnecessary; it must have been delivered at a time when, humanly speaking, there was hope from the Egyptians.”—וְהִנֵּה, having respect to the existing state of Egypt since the battle of Carchemish, introduces the following description, in which “the binding” forms the principal statement on which the infinitives are dependent. Bound up is the first, the most immediate thing which has to be done after wounding, and the intention or aim thereof is to apply the means of healing (cures); in particular, since the chief means consist in the band which holds together the broken parts, that a bandage be applied (לחבשה resumes חבשה again) so that the arm be strengthened, and, as the consequence, be again rendered capable of “taking hold of the sword.”
Eze_30:22. Therefore refers to the foregoing principal announcement, that Pharaoh’s might is broken without the prospect of restoration, and accordingly what is farther impending can only be a complete overthrow; and this is introduced by הנני, a parallel to Eze_30:21, and then summarily pronounced (זרעתיו).—The strong (החזקה, with a reference to לחזקה in Eze_30:21) signifies: what still existed unbroken as to power in Egypt, particularly in the land itself; the broken (Eze_30:21), that which must still be broken, with allusion to the shattering at Carchemish; especially the impotent attempt to turn aside to the help of Jerusalem, which must therefore be thought of as still in immediate prospect. [Cocc. explains the two arms of Hophra, and the small Egyptian kingdom which followed. They have been also explained of the supremacy over Syria and that over Egypt.]—The might, power, and dominion of Pharaoh are to become incapable of attack and resistance.
Eze_30:23. Comp. Eze_30:26, Eze_29:12; Eze_22:15.
Eze_30:24. וְחִוַּקְתִי, Piel (strengthening; anyhow, still another חזק than is to be supposed in the לחזקה of Eze_30:21), for the sword also is not that which has fallen out of the hand of Pharaoh, but Jehovah’s, whence the following explains itself, and at the same time what is said in Eze_30:22.—לְפָנָיו, before the king of Babylon, who and his arms, here and in Eze_30:25 placed in opposition to Pharaoh and his arms, are the antithesis which forms the substance of this section.
Eze_30:25. וְהַחְַזַקְתִי, Hiphil, for distinction in respect to the Piel in Eze_30:24, which, on account of the failings, יָד, is explained by Hitzig, not through “seizing,” but with a reference to Exo_17:11-12, and by way of contrast to תִּפֹּלְנָה through “holding upright,” “holding above,” so that he retains the upper hand. But the slight difference between “holding strong” and “strengthening,” endowing with power, is of itself enough. Hengst. compares Gen_49:24, in respect that the arms of the king of Egypt, left to his own impotence, sank down powerless.—Since the arms of both are named, the words: and they know, etc., may easily be referred thereto, but principally to the king of Babylon; yet also to the land of Egypt, against which the sword of judgment in the hand of that king was stretched out. אותָהּ may be referred to יד, also to חרב.
Eze_30:26. Repetition of Eze_30:23 at the close.
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.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22 the time of the heathen--namely, for taking vengeance on…
the time of the heathen--namely, for taking vengeance on them. The judgment on Egypt is the beginning of a world-wide judgment on all the heathen enemies of God (Joe 1:15; Joe 2:1-2; Joel 3:1-21; Oba 1:15).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 24 2. Woe worth the day — That is, Woe…
2. Woe worth the day — That is, Woe be to the day. This is not satire; it is real lamentation. There is no nation or people without a heavenly Father’s love and watch care. Just as Jehovah brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, so did he bring up “the Philistines from Caphtor, and the Syrians from Kir” (Amo_9:7; see also Psalms 87).
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 26 2. Howl ye] The day of the. Lord is…
2. Howl ye] The day of the. Lord is one of terror and lamentation, Amo_5:20; Isa_13:6; Zep_1:7; Zep_1:14; Joe_2:1 seq.
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 On vv3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23 (3) The time of the heathen.—The judgment upon Egypt…
(3) The time of the heathen.—The judgment upon Egypt is but an individual instance, and is symbolic of general judgment upon all merely worldly power. Her fall is one step in the general overthrow of whatever exalts and opposes itself to God. Very similar to Eze_30:2-3 are the prophecies in Isa_13:6; Isa_13:9; Joe_1:13; Joe_1:15; Joe_2:2; Oba_1:15; Zep_1:7; Zep_1:14.
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 On vv1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 25 The word of the Lord came again, etc. The…
The word of the Lord came again, etc. The section that follows, ending with Ver. 18, is exceptional as standing without a date. It may be either
(1) a continuation of the prophecy in Eze_29:17-21, and so belong to the latest years of Ezekiel"s work; or
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(2) that prophecy may be regarded as standing by itself a parenthesis inserted at a later date, so that we go back to the earlier word of the Lord Eze_29:1-16. Jerome, Havernick, Hitzig, Rosenm Kliefoth, and others are in favor of the former view, chiefly on the ground that Ver. 3 speaks of the nearness of the coming judgment. That the day of the Lord should be "near" is, however, too vague and relative a term to be decisive. On the whole, the question must be left as one which we have no sufficient data for solving. The close parallelism with Eze 29 seems to me slightly in favor of the second view.
Vers. 1-3. A cloudy day.
As in the case of Tyre, the denunciation of Divine Judgments against Egypt is succeeded by a lamentation for the doleful results of those judgments. Pity follows wrath. The terrible condition that fills the prophet"s mind with dismay is full of more pressing warning when it is such as to excite the deepest commiseration. The advent of Divine chastisement is always a cloudy day.
I PROGNOSTICATIONS OF A CLOUDY DAY. The dreadful day has not yet come; but the prophet foresees it in the near future. The newspapers furnish us with weather forecasts. The prophets supplied the Jews with premonitions of approaching changes in the political and social atmosphere. We have no gifted seers to take their place in the present day. But we have hints and warnings that should aid us in this direction.
1. The laws of God are changeless and eternal. Spiritual meteorology may appear to be as fickle as English weather. But as clouds and rain come and go by fixed Divine ordinances, in spite of their apparent waywardness, so the darkness and storms that afflict human life are really directed by God"s inflexible principles of righteousness. Therefore, if any people are in the condition that drew down clouds of judgment on Israel or Egypt centuries ago, they will assuredly repeat the dreadful process today.
2. Clouds do not come without producing causes. They seem to sail up like ships from the sea, coming and going at their own will But we know that they are produced by certain causes. Mountains and forests attract rain-clouds. Clouds of calamity are not uncaused. Sin and folly collect the heaviest of them. Some may come in mercy, like cooling clouds that refresh the traveler who is fatigued with the heat and glare of the day; others, thunder-clouds of judgment, charged with fatal fires, are gathered by an evil condition of life. When the cause is present we may well expect its consequence.
II THE EXPERIENCE OF A CLOUDY DAY. This would mean more in the sunny East than it seems to imply to inhabitants of our cloud-girt island.
1. A cloudy day is dark. Instead of the familiarly brilliant noon, men see only gloom at midday. In cloudy days of human life joy vanishes and the soul is plunged into sadness.
2. A cloudy day obscures the heavens. A curtain of inky clouds covers the blue sky and hides the sun. The saddest hours are those in which the vision of heaven is lost, when doubt and despair destroy our consciousness of God, when faith in the Unseen is drowned in spiritual darkness.
3. A cloudy day blots out the beauty of earth. The loveliest prospect is sobered and saddened in heavy weather. The whole aspect of the world is changed by a transformation of its sky. We cannot be independent of heavenly influences. Oar present earthly life is colored and shaded by our spiritual experiences. A clouded soul will see nothing but gloom in the fairest of external fortunes.
III THE CONSEQUENCES OF A CLOUDY DAY.
1. The cloudy day may usher in a storm. Thus was it for Egypt and the other nations warned by Ezekiel. The cloud from the north was to burst in the troubles of Nebuchadnezzar"s invasion. Threatening days may be followed by days of real calamity. God does not speak in vain. He holds the thunderbolt, and he throws it also. There are tempests of Divine wrath. "Woe worth the day" when such a tempest bursts! It will come upon every impenitent soul.
2. The cloudy day may break in refreshing showers.
(1) Some of our most alarming prospects are accompanied by blessings in disguise. The cloud is "big with mercy.
(2) Even clouds of judgment bring ultimate good. Storms clear the air. Judgments are not purely vindictive and destructive. They open the door for mercy.
3. The cloudy day may be followed by a bright day. No sunshine is so sweet and bright as that which follows rain. No joy is so sunny as that which accompanies a penitents restoration.
HOMILIES BY J.R. THOMSON Vers. 1-3. The day of the Lord.
There is in this expression, which occurs in various parts of this book of prophecy, a certain vagueness which is not inconsistent with grandeur and sublimity. The prophet"s own mind was evidently impressed with the fact that, whilst every day is an occasion for the manifestation of the Divine presence among men, there are days which are peculiarly the Lord"s, because connected in an especial manner with the purposes of the Eternal with regard to the sons of time.
I THE DAY OF THE REVELATION OF THE LORD"S POWER. Memorable are such days as those which witness a great king"s accession to the throne, a great battle deciding the fortunes of nations, the passing of a great measure affecting the welfare of millions, the sending forth of a religious mission to a heathen community. But, whilst every day upon which some grand deed is wrought, or some noble institution founded, is in a sense a day of the Lord, there are days in which Divine providence signally asserts or vindicates itself, in which the might of the Omnipotent is convincingly displayed; and such days are emphatically designated by the term employed in the text.
II THE DAY OF THE EXECUTION OF THE LORD"S RECOMPENSE AND JUDGMENT. Judging by the language here employed by the prophet, the day of the Lord he announces seems especially of this character. "Howl ye! Woe worth the day!" are expressions which surely betoken the coming of the Lord in vengeance day of clouds," "the time of the heathen." Long-deferred correction is now to be inflicted; threatenings often repeated are now to be fulfilled.
Forbearance is exhausted, and the day of the Lord shall see him arise to judgment.
III THE DAY OF THE REDEMPTION OF THE LORD"S PEOPLE. The defeat and confusion of the adversaries is accompanied by the deliverance and exaltation of the friends of God. When the day comes which shall see the destruction of Israel"s foes, Israel shall go free and shall rejoice in her liberty, with the shout, "Now is the day of salvation!" "Lift up your heads, for the day of redemption draweth nigh!
IV THE DAY WHICH DISPELS THE NIGHT OF HUMAN MISUNDERSTANDING AND DOUBT. The day of man is the day of ignorance and of fear, and is little better than the night when compared with the brightness which God"s presence brings. To Christians, the day of the Lord is the day of their Savior"s birth and coming to this world of sin. "The people which sat in darkness saw a great light." Then the errors and hopelessness of long ages were rolled away, like mists before the rising of the Sun of Righteousness, with healing in his wings.
V THE DAY WHICH SHALL MANIFEST THE LORD"S GLORY AND FULFILL HIS PURPOSES. The day of the Lord has interest and significance for men; but the very term implies that its central meaning is not human, but Divine. The fools who have said in the heart, "There is no God!" the hypocrites and formalists, who have professed belief in God, but to whom the meaning of such belief is limited to words; the defiant and rebellious sinners, of whom it may justly be said, "God is not in all their ways; all these are addressed with power, and are aroused from their infidelity, when the day of the Lord breaks upon the world, and when the Lord himself draws near. T.
HOMILIES BY J.D. DAVIES
Vers. 1-19. The Lord"s day in Egypt.
The Lord"s day is the day in which God comes nearest to men and manifests himself. Whether he will come as our Friend or as our Foe depends on our state of mind towards him. He has not abandoned the race of men. They are on trial, undergoing discipline. Now and again he comes near, either in his radiant robes of grace or in solemn aspect as an impartial Judge. Even when he approaches nations in the latter character, he gives premonitions of his coming, and this is an act of grace. In all his doings righteousness and love are sweetly blended.
I THE CAUSE OF DIVINE JUDGMENTS IN EGYPT. This is explicitly stated, "I will also destroy the idols, and I will cause their images to cease." Idolatry is not merely a system of error; it is a fount of immorality, it is a seed-bed of moral corruption. In the realm of religion you cannot separate theory from practice. Theories of atheism today become habits of sensuality tomorrow. Where God is ignored, every vice will speedily appear. The depravities of Egypt had tainted all the nations round about.
II THE SEVERITY OF DIVINE JUDGMENTS. It is impossible for the wisest man to estimate the demerit of sin. No human jurist can place a competent penalty against transgression of the Law of God. He alone who created man and imposed law can determine adequate punishments. We can leave God to do what is wise and right. Usually, the sky over Egypt is transcendently bright; now that clear sky shall be covered with a cloud.
1. A foreign sword shall invade the land. "It shall be the time of the heathen." A sharp sword wielded by a fierce enemy was ordained to mow down the people.
2. Desolation was decreed. So great was the decimation to be, that populous cities would be silent, and death-like desolation would prevail throughout that once prosperous land. Like the deserts which envelop Egypt round barren and dreary so was Egypt itself to become!
3. Fire was to complete the overthrow. "I will set fire in Egypt." Her mansions and cottages, built of most combustible material, would be ready food for flames; and, for lack of water, towns and villages would speedily disappear. How vulnerable on every side was this renowned empire!
4. Her very foundations would be rooted up. Under this language there is portrayed, not the removal of material substructions of cities, but the demolition of imperial and. national foundations. The throne should be completely undermined; the government should pass into other hands.
5. The overthrow should be coextensive with Egypt. No part was to be excepted. Beginning at the first stronghold the tower of Syene the devastation should sweep throughout the land. Flourishing cities are mentioned by name as devoted to doom. One calamity shall befall one; some other calamity is prepared for another. God calls to his service ten thousand agents.
III THE INSTRUMENT OF THE DIVINE JUDGMENT. In this ease God has announced beforehand what instrument he will employ. The main leader in this great tragedy was Nebuchadnezzar King of Babylon. Some good reason prevailed with God why he should be selected. To be the tool of a bad man is a great dishonor, but to do any service for our righteous King is a substantial honor. Sometimes God has seen fit to employ material forces to execute his vengeance, as in the eases of Lisbon and Pompeii. Sometimes he has employed an angel, as when he discomfited Sennacherib, as when he smote the inhabitants of Jerusalem. Yet, if the human instrument be not himself righteous, he shall also in his turn be chastised. God gives to men rewards on earth to whom he is bound to deny the possession of heaven.
IV THE CERTAINTY OF DIVINE JUDGMENTS. It is made sure by the testimony of Jehovah. "Thus saith the Lord;" "I the Lord have spoken it." Not even the actual overthrow of Egypt made the event more certain than it was made by the word of Jehovah. His declarations are as good as his performances. His words are deeds. As soon as he speaks the event begins to evolve, although we only perceive the final stroke. Our business, therefore, is simply to ascertain whether God has spoken; if he has, we may conclude that the word will become fact. Between his word and its fulfillment there is an iron link of necessity. It must be done.
V THE COLLATERAL EFFECTS OF DIVINE JUDGMENTS. "The men of the land that is in league, shall fall with them by the sword." Allies shall suffer along with the principal offenders. To prop up a rotten throne is a crime. Judicious care is needed in the choice of friends, whether public or private. By thoughtlessly identifying ourselves with bad men, we become "partakers of their sins." Such overwhelming judgment as this in Egypt would strike terror into the hearts of neighbors. "In that day shall messengers from me make the careless Ethiopians afraid." All who dwell in the vicinity shall be awed by the great catastrophe. If such disaster overtook the Egyptians, might it not also overtake them? Had they no sin to be chastised? If the Egyptians were unable to buy off, or resist, the foe, what could they do in the day of visitation? Well may all wrongdoers tremble! "When thy judgments are abroad in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.
VI THE FINAL PURPOSE OF DIVINE JUDGMENT. "They shall know that I am the Lord." In their death they shall be convinced of a truth which they refused to acknowledge during life. In the crisis of the conflict between Jehovah and the idols men shall learn on which side the real strength lies. So is it still when too late to reverse the course of life, too late to change character men discover that there is a God in the earth, and that they must pass through the crucial process of judgment. Yet how slow are the nations still to recognize and revere Jehovah! What patience and forbearance cloth our God show! Nevertheless, it is true men shall confess that Jehovah is Lord. Is it not wiser to learn the lesson forthwith?
VII SENTIMENTS PROPER TO THE NEAR APPROACH OF JUDGMENT. "Howl ye! Woe worth the day!" It is an impressive proof of the tender love of God that he employs all suitable means to warn us of the gradual approach of doom. Of him it is not true that the "gods have feet of wool." The noise of his chariot-wheels is heard in the distance. He sends messengers of various kinds in advance, to prevent, if possible, the threatened disaster. What gratitude ought to break forth from our hearts! And with what awe should we hear the thunderous tread of his footsteps! Verily, men are as the small dust of the balance Compared with the majesty of God. For the creature to contend with his Creator is folly inexpressible! While yet the day of opportunity lingers, let counsels of wisdom prevail! D.
HOMILIES BY W. CLARKSON Vers. 1-3, 7. The day of desolation.
To what extent we are to take the prophet"s description of the "woe" that was to overtake Egypt in a strictly external sense must (as said before on Eze_29:16) depend on our principle of biblical interpretation, together with our reading of ancient history. For the purpose of religious edification it is enough that we accept these words as a picture of the desolation to which a course of guilt, whether national or individual, may be expected to lead.
I NATIONAL DESOLATION. Of this Ezekiel furnishes, in the whole chapter, a most graphic picture.
1. Prosperity (fullness) departs, and there is no more boast of its great population (Ver. 10).
2. Violent death lays numbers of its people low; the land is "filled with the slain" (Vers. 4, 11).
3. Its hope, in the person of its young men, is slain (Ver. 17).
4. Its beauty, its pride, in the person of its daughters, is removed (Ver. 18).
5. Its physical resources are dried up (Ver. 12).
6. Its natural leaders are lost to it (ver 13).
7. Its religious institutions are broken up (Ver. 13).
8. Its allies and dependencies are dragged down with it to the ground (Vers. 5, 6); its yokes are broken" (Ver. 18).
9. Its people are stricken with dismay; instead of its ancient pride and pomp (Ver. 18), fearfulness fills the heart of its inhabitants (Ver. 13); a cloud of dire misfortune throws the whole country into dark shadow (Vers. 3, 18). The final, comprehensive touch is in the language of the text.
10. Desolation in the midst of desolation. It does not appear that Egypt ever presented so desperate a scene as this; and we may understand either
(1) that God, for some sufficient reason, forbore to visit the land with the last extremity of woe; (see Jon_3:4, Jon_3:10) or
(2) that the language of the prophecy is to be taken as hyperbolical, and thus interpreted. But we must also understand that
(3) the ultimate issue of collective (national) iniquity is destruction, desolation; witness the cities of the plain, Nineveh, Babylon, Jerusalem. The "day" of sin and of defiance, of tyrannical power and guilty gratification may last long, but its sun is sure to set in dark clouds, and when the morrow comes, as it will come, there will be a day of dire and widespread desolation. "Woe worth the day!" when it arrives.
II THE DESOLATION OF THE SPIRIT.
1. In what it is found. Spiritual desolation is experienced when all that is really precious to the human soul is broken up and has departed. When
(1) the good habits of devotion and of virtue, formed in childhood, have become loosened and have given way;
(2) the soul has lost its faith in the providence, the nearness, the notice, and perhaps even the being of God;
(3) the man has become separated, both in sympathy and in action, from those with whom he once walked and worshipped;
(4) hope of future blessedness has left the heart bare of all expectancy beyond the grave, and the future is nothing but a blank;
(5) life has lost all its sacredness, and therefore nearly all its worth. This sad desolateness of son culminates in
(6) the loss of all self-respect, and in
(7) the extension of the same spiritual waste to those who are within range of its influence; when one is "desolate in the midst of desolation.
1. How it may be averted. "None of them that trust in him shall be desolate," says the psalmist. (Psa_35:22) The fear of God, walking in the light of his truth, communion with Jesus Christ and association with his friends and followers, the daily prayer for the restraining and the prompting influences of the Spirit of God, this will secure the soul from loss and from decline. He who lives thus will not enter even the outer shadow of this calamity.
2. The way of deliverance. Men once thought that there was no way for a human soul to ascend from the pit of spiritual ruin to the lofty levels of holy service and sacred joy and immortal hope. We think thus no more now that he has spoken to us who has said, "I am the Way. 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 Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v1 THE DOOM OF EGYPT (Chap. 30)
THE DOOM OF EGYPT (Chap. 30)
EXEGETICAL NOTES.—This chapter contains two distinct messages: Eze_30:1-19 being an extension, with more life-like detail, of the prophecy announced in chap. Eze_29:1-16 relating to Egypt; the second message, Eze_30:20-26, referring directly to Pharaoh and the downfall of his dynasty.
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Eze_30:1. “Woe worth the day!” Alas for the day!
Eze_30:2. “The time of the heathen.” Wherein they shall be punished. The judgment on Egypt is the beginning of a world-wide judgment on all the heathen enemies of God (Joe_1:15; Joe_2:1-2; Joel 3; Oba_1:15).
Eze_30:4. “Her foundations shall be broken down.” Referring to the state under the figure of a house destroyed from the foundation—government, laws, strongholds, and all the defences of the commonwealth.
Eze_30:5. “Ethiopia, Libya, and Lydia.”Cush, Phut, and Lud, allies of the Egyptians mentioned Jer_46:9. “The mingled people.” Hired soldiers of various nationalities. “Chub.” This is the only place in the Old Testament where this people is named. Supposed to be the Kufa mentioned on the monuments—a nation north of Palestine. “Men of the land in league.” Not only the Jews—the people of the covenant—resident in Egypt, but all the confederates who entered into a league with the Egyptian king.
Eze_30:9. “Messengers go forth from Me in ships to make the careless Ethiopians afraid.” The cataracts on the Nile interposing between them and Egypt shall be no barrier. Ill news travels fast when the feet of the messengers are quickened with the fear of Divinely outpoured vengeance.
Eze_30:13. “I will destroy the idols of Noph.” Memphis, the capital of Middle Egypt and the chief seat of idol-worship. “Pathros”—Upper Egypt, with No, or Thebes, its capital, famed for its magnificent buildings, of which colossal ruins still remain, in antithesis to Zoan, or Tanis, a chief city in Lower Egypt within the Delta.
Eze_30:15. “Sin, the strength of Egypt.” Pelusium, the frontier fortress on the north-east, called by Hirtius the Lock of Egypt, and by Suidas the Key of Egypt.
Eze_30:17. “Aven”—meaning vanity or iniquity. The famous Heliopolis, or City of the Sun—the religious centre, the spiritual capital. “Phi-beseth”—Bubastis in Lower Egypt, near the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, a chief place of idolatry, and notorious for the Cat-worship established there.
Eze_30:18. “Tehaphnehes.” The same as Daphne, near Pelusium, a royal residence of the Pharaohs (Jer_43:7; Jer_43:9). Called Hanes (Isa_30:4). It was said that with its capture the pride or glory of Egypt’s strength would cease. “The yokes of Egypt.” The sceptres—the tyrannical supremacy exercised over other nations. Nebuchadnezzar broke the sceptre of Egypt when he confirmed the kingdom to Amasis, who rebelled against Apries (Pharaoh-Hophra).
Eze_30:21. “I have broken the arm of Pharaoh.” Alluding to the defeat of Pharaoh-Hophra at Carchemish. By this battle the fate of Egypt was decided for ever. It never rallied from the defeat there sustained: it was the beginning of the end. The practical design of the prophecy was to extinguish all hope of any aid from Egypt, and to direct the expectation of the exiles to God alone for succour.
Eze_30:22. “And will break his arms, the strong, and that which was broken.” The military and governmental power of Pharaoh shall be shattered. The one arm of Egypt already broken was all the region from the Nile to the Euphrates which Nebuchadnezzar had already taken from him (2Ki_24:7); the arm still strong, but soon to be broken, was Egypt proper, over which he still held a resemblance of authority.
Eze_30:25. “I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon.” The Lord seizes the arms of the king of Babylon, and they are thereby kept strong, as it is said of Joseph in Gen_49:24, “Strong are the arms of his hands by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob,” while the arms of the king of Egypt, left to himself, hang down powerless.
Eze_30:26. “I will scatter the Egyptians.” Several fled with Apries to Upper Egypt, and when Nebuchadnezzar wasted the country he carried many of them to Babylon. As Israel and Judah had been scattered among the nations, owing to the corrupting influence of Egypt, which brought God’s wrath upon the elect nation, so the Egyptians themselves, in righteous retribution, were to be scattered among the nations.
HOMILETICS
THE OVERTHROW OF A GREAT NATION
(Eze_30:1-19.)
There is a fine piece of military music that represents the movements of a battalion in the distance; faintly but unmistakably the strains fall upon the ear, growing more distinct and loud in the steady advance, until, having reached the scene of action and begun operations, the music breaks into a crash of wild, stirring melody, that strangely mingles with the noise and confusion of the dreadful conflict. Similar to this is the voice of the prophet which, in the preceding chapter faintly indicates the approach of calamity, rises in the present chapter into shrill, piercing tones of agony, as if already in the midst of the destruction he prophesies. In this paragraph we learn that the overthrow of a great nation—
I. Is the occasion of widespread suffering and sorrow (Eze_30:1-4). Egypt, which had grown into the magnificence of a first-rate power and become renowned in commerce, art, literature, and science, was doomed to fall. It was to experience the crushing vengeance of the Divine power it had so often resisted and defied, and to suffer for its cruel treatment of the people of Jehovah, whom it had so often deceived and oppressed. Great was the consternation of its proud rulers, and loud and heartrending the wails of its stricken people, as the sword of the destroyer passed through the land. It was indeed “a cloudy day;” the dreariness of havoc and desolation was intensified by the darkness of despair that filled the minds of the routed sufferers. It was worse than that night of horror in the past history of Egypt when the first-born were slain and when “there was not a house where there was not one dead.” It is a painful humiliation to a great people to see how suddenly their power is crushed, government disorganised, institutions scattered, buildings, the slow growth of generations, prone in ruins, and the unsuspecting citizens one day lulled into a false security, the next paralysed with fear. The refinement and luxury to which they were accustomed render their privations and distresses the more acute.
II. Involves the ruin of its allies and abettors (Eze_30:5-9.) “Ethiopia, Libya, Lydia, all the mingled people, and Chub,” represented smaller nationalities who had been either conquered by Egypt, or who, while retaining their nationality and a certain degree of autonomy, linked their fortunes with Egypt and contributed to her advancement and aggrandisement. In return for their support they claimed the protection of the overshadowing power. But when Egypt fell, they fell. When the volcano shatters the mountain, all the little knolls and rocks that cling to it are buried in the general ruin. When the hurricane uproots the giant tree, the parasites that fed and lived upon it are hurled to the dust. The adulators who fan the national pride with their fulsome flattery, and the shameless debauchees who employ their vilest ingenuities in augmenting the national wickedness, will be inevitably involved in the righteous judgment which is sure to come.
III. Is accomplished by an agent specially equipped for the work (Eze_30:10-12). The power that was to crush Egypt was already hovering over the fated nation. The vast populations of the Nile were to be opposed by a multitude of strangers whose warlike exploits had made them “the terrible of the nations;” the military genius of Pharaoh-Hophra was to come into conflict with Nebuchadnezzar, a still more able and victorious warrior. It was not the first time the great Babylonish monarch had come in contact with the arms of Egypt. Before his accession, while Crown Prince, he had fought the great battle of Carchemish, which expelled Pharaoh-Necho from Western Asia. During the siege of Jerusalem he had been disturbed by the attempt of Pharaoh-Necho to relieve that city, and during the siege of Troy, Egypt again interfered to help the Phœnicians. Nebuchadnezzar chafed under these annoyances; the proud prestige and pretensions of Egypt roused his envy and wrath, and he vowed to be revenged. All the time Jehovah was preparing him to be the agent to punish Egypt, and a rebellion against Pharaoh-Hophra by Amasis, one of his officers, presented a favourable opportunity. Gathering his army of veterans, inured to warfare and flushed with recent victories, Nebuchadnezzar invaded Egypt and utterly subdued it from Migdol to Syene, the extreme frontiers of the kingdom, creating a horrible devastation, from which it did not recover for forty years. The Babylonish king knew not that he was simply the instrument of Jehovah in inflicting well-merited punishment, and thus fulfilling the words of the Divinely-inspired prophet. Whenever a nation reaches the crisis of its infamy, Divine justice fails not to provide the means of adequate retribution.
IV. May be traced to the enervating influence of its idolatry (Eze_30:13-18). The prime offence of Egypt was its idolatry. This was the ground of its indictment before High Heaven. Not only had it debased its own people, but it had invaded the land of the chosen people and destroyed their loyalty to Jehovah by the introduction of idolatrous rites. Idolatry is not only a foe to virtue, but a supreme insult to the One only true God, whose nature cannot tolerate a rival. Where idolatry predominates the formation of a robust moral character is impossible; it is the canker at the root of national life, and can only end in disintegration and decay. It is significant that the places mentioned in these verses—Noph, Pathros, Zoan, No, Sin, Tehaphnehes—the cities where idolatry was most gross and rampant, are especially singled out for punishment. No nation can maintain itself in the front rank where God is persistently ignored.
V. Is the expression of the Divine judgment on its iniquities. “Thus will I execute judgments, and they shall know that I am the Lord” (Eze_30:19). The history of the downfall of great nations is the voice of God speaking to the nations of to-day, and saying that sin shall not go unpunished. “The time of the heathen” (Eze_30:3) plainly indicates that a period comes in the history of sinful nations when the forbearance of God is withdrawn and wrong-doing is allowed to reap its legitimate harvest. Hardened indeed is the heart that is insensible to the enormity of sin until it is smitten with the thunderbolt of Divine wrath. It is wise, before it be too late, to turn in penitence to Him who “retaineth not His anger for ever, because He delighteth in mercy.”
LESSONS.—
1. National greatness is an opportunity for maintaining the right.
2. The greatest nation, if unfaithful to God, is doomed to fall.
3. The destiny of all nations is in the hands of God.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Eze_30:2. “Woe worth the day!” A Pathetic Lament, as uttered—
1. By one who foresees the nearness and awfulness of the calamity.
2. By the patriot distressed for the humiliation and ruin of his country.
3. By the sufferers themselves in the wild tumult of their agony.
4. By neighbouring nations left defenceless by the fall of their powerful patron.
5. By those who have obstinately neglected the day of salvation.
Eze_30:3. “The day is near.” “In some two years you shall be miserably routed in the deserts of Libya; immediately after, the civil war for eleven years together shall waste you, and then Nebuchadnezzar’s forces will be upon you. So that, whereas there may be sixteen or eighteen years between the prophecy and its fulfilling, here are thirteen or fourteen of them taken up with sorrows and afflictions, forerunners of the rest.”—Matthew Pool.
—“The time of the heathen.” Vengeance on idolatry.
1. Is mercifully delayed to give space for repentance and reform.
2. Will be inflicted with unerring certainty.
3. Will fill the victims with terror and dismay—“a cloudy day—the day shall be darkened” (Eze_30:3; Eze_30:18).
4. Will be complete and universal (compare Psalms 79 with exegetical note on this verse).
Eze_30:4-18. The Horrors of War. I. Revolting scenes of human carnage. “The sword shall take away her multitude” (Eze_30:4); “All helpers destroyed” (Eze_30:8); “Fill the land with the slain” (Eze_30:11). II. Unspeakable physical and mental suffering. “Great pain—distresses daily” (Eze_30:4; Eze_30:9; Eze_30:16); “To make the careless afraid—I will put fear in the land” (Eze_30:9; Eze_30:13). III. Reckless waste and destruction. “Countries desolate—cities wasted” (Eze_30:7); “A fire in Egypt—all helpers destroyed” (Eze_30:8; Eze_30:14; Eze_30:16); “I will make rivers dry and the land waste” (Eze_30:12). IV. Loss and degradation of youthful life. “The young men fall by the sword—daughters go into captivity” (Eze_30:17-18). V. The overthrow of established government. “Her foundations shall be broken down” (Eze_30:4); “There shall be no more a prince of the land” (Eze_30:13); “I shall break the yokes (sceptres) of Egypt” (Eze_30:18). LESSONS.—War.
1. Unjustifiable when it is a mere thirst for conquest.
2. May be a scourge to punish national sins.
3. Arouses the worst human passions.
Eze_30:5. Unholy Confederacies.
1. May seem formidable in numbers and strength.
2. Have no principle of cohesion to ensure permanency.
3. Are involved in general ruin.
4. Their fate a beacon-warning to the good.
Eze_30:6. “See the justice of God: Egypt pretended to uphold Jerusalem when that was tottering, but proved a deceitful reed; and now they that pretend to uphold Egypt shall prove no better. Those that deceive others are commonly paid in their own coin; they are themselves deceived.”—M. Henry.
Eze_30:8. “As sinners perversely refuse to know God as a God of love, they shall know Him as a God that hates sin and takes vengeance on the sinner for all unatoned guilt. Severe as were the temporal judgments on Pharaoh and his people, what are they when compared with the eternal judgments which shall descend on the lost?”—Fausset.
Eze_30:10-12. “God punishes one knave by the other, who does not escape His judgment, but is only reserved for the same; as in Jeremiah 25, the king of Babylon has no other advantage over those punished by him but this, that he drinks last. Wickedness and judgment go hand in hand. Power can only be given to the wicked for a short time.”—Hengstenberg.
Eze_30:11-12. “They are the terrible of the nations both in respect of force and of fierceness, and being terrible, shall make terrible work. They are the wicked, who will not be restrained by reason and conscience, the laws of nature, or the laws of nations, for they are without law. They are strangers, who therefore shall show no compassion for old-acquaintance’ sake.”—M. Henry.
Eze_30:13. The Delusiveness of Idolatry.
1. Its temples and worship a standing insult to the only true God.
2. Debases its votaries.
3. Powerless to help in the day of trouble.
—“The wrath of God is especially directed against the idols of a land, of whatever kind they be, whether they be images directly worshipped as gods, or riches which steal away from God the hearts of those who would repudiate the charge of idolatry, though guilty of it before the God who calls covetousness idolatry. As the Egyptian On, the seat of the idolatrous sun-worship, was doomed by God to become Aven, or vanity, so all creature-confidences shall at last prove vain to those who have trusted in them rather than in God.”—Fausset.
—“There shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt”—no native or independent prince, ruling the whole country. The dynasties of Egypt had subsisted from Menes, her first king, who is said to have reigned in the year of the world 2251, to the destruction of the Pharaohs by Nebuchadnezzar, which terminated the reign of the Egyptian princes, and showed the fulfilment of prophecy and the judgments of God upon the oppressors of His people.
Eze_30:19.: comp. Eze_30:8, “And they shall know that I am the Lord.” God revealed in Judgment.
1. When all other modes of revelation are persistently ignored.
2. Shows He is not indifferent to the sufferings of the oppressed.
3. Cruelty and injustice shall not go unpunished.
4. The impartial justice of the Divine procedures shall be universally acknowledged and adored.
—“The true God, whom they do not mean to worship willingly, must come to His rights in the punishment inflicted on them. This is not merely an alarming but also a comforting point of view. The most comfortless of all thoughts is to have no part in God. How many transgressors have joyfully devoted themselves to the sword in the conviction that by the punishment they come to have a part in God!”—Hengstenberg.
HOMILETICS
A PROUD MONARCH HUMBLED
(Eze_30:20-26.)
Pharaoh-Hophra, the king of Egypt referred to in this paragraph, was a man of considerable capacity and enterprise. He displayed great military genius and activity. During the first years of his reign he subdued the island of Cyprus, besieged the city of Sidon by land and sea, and took it and made himself master of Phœnicia and Palestine. Elated with success, his pride knew no bounds, and he insanely boasted that it was not in the power of the gods to dethrone him. His illusions were destined to receive a rude awakening. Libya, harassed by the Greeks, appealed to Hophra for assistance. He despatched an army for their deliverance, but the Egyptians were disastrously defeated, and very few of the soldiers returned to their native land. The sight of the straggling and wretched survivors filled the land with mourning, and indignation against Hophra was loud and threatening. It was whispered he had sent the Egyptian army into Libya to destroy it, and by surrounding himself with Greek mercenaries, for whom he showed great partiality, he was seeking to rule Egypt as a tyrant. His subjects rose in rebellion. Hophra sent Amasis, one of his officers, to quell the revolt; but the soldiers crowned him with a helmet and made him king. He accepted the honour, and made common cause with the mutineers. Exasperated with the news, Hophra sent Patarbemis, another of his great officers and one of the principal lords of his court, to arrest Amasis; and returning unsuccessful, the angry king caused the nose and ears of Patarbemis to be cut off. So barbarous an outrage, committed upon a person of such high distinction, roused the Egyptians into more violent opposition, and the insurrection became general. Hophra was compelled to retire into Upper Egypt, where he defended himself for some years, and Amasis made himself master of the rest of his dominions. The army of Nebuchadnezzar, taking advantage of these intestine troubles, swept down upon Egypt and wrecked it from end to end. Egypt was made tributary to Babylon, and Nebuchadnezzar, having appointed Amasis as his viceroy, returned to his capital laden with the spoils of victory. As soon as the great king had departed Hophra emerged from his obscurity, and gathering an army of 30,000 mercenaries, made war against Amasis. The royal army was routed, Hophra taken prisoner, and shut up in his royal palace at Sais. This, however, would not satisfy the excited populace. They clamoured for the unfortunate king to be given up to them, and gaining their wish, they immediately strangled him. In this paragraph the prophet presents us with a graphic description of a proud monarch humbled—
I. By the partial loss of his dominion. “I have broken the arm of Pharaoh.” (Eze_30:21). The loss of distant dependencies is often the precursor of national downfall: it is a sign of weakness at the centre of power. It is a loss of prestige and influence. It is a deep wound to a proud monarch deluded with the notion that he is everywhere invincible. The bitterness of his resentment blinds him to the lessons that the curtailment of his Empire should suggest.
II. By provoking the active opposition of Jehovah. “Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I am against Pharaoh. But I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon” (Eze_30:22; Eze_30:25). Behind the might of Nebuchadnezzar was the invincible power of Jehovah, who had determined to punish Pharaoh for his iniquity. The strongest monarch is powerless before the vengeance of Heaven; the justice he has outraged ensures his humiliation and pain. In Retzch’s illustrations of Goethe’s “Faust” is one plate where angels are represented as dropping roses upon the demons who are contending for the soul of Faust. Every rose falls like molten metal, burning and blistering where it touches. So is it that justice acts upon those who have wilfully abused its claims. It bewilders where it ought to guide; it scorches where it ought to soothe and comfort. When God is against us we must be prepared for the worst.
III. By shattering his military strength. “And will break his arms, the strong”—the portion of the army still remaining faithful to him—“and that which was broken”—the portion already in revolt. “And the arms of Pharaoh shall fall down”—he shall be deprived of the resources for making war (Eze_30:22; Eze_30:25). Pharaoh had boasted of his army and exulted in its brave exploits. Now he is cast down by the power in which he had trusted. Shorn of his military aggrandisement he is utterly defenceless and weak. “All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword” (Mat_26:52). No nation is secure when the military is in the ascendant. Gibbon traces one of the potent causes for the decline of the Roman Empire to the overwhelming influence of the army.
IV. By the total dismemberment of his kingdom. “I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and disperse them through the countries” (Eze_30:23; Eze_30:26). The kingdom was torn in pieces by civil war, and though Hophra made a brave and resolute stand for some years, he was compelled to yield, and he himself perished by the hands of his enraged subjects. The process of humbling a proud spirit is sometimes slow, but every successive defeat intensifies the suffering, until there is nothing left but the wild helplessness of mad despair.
V. By making him utterly dispirited. “He shall groan with the groanings of a deadly wounded man” (Eze_30:24). There is a defeat that involves no loss of dignity and may be borne with fortitude. In the Franco-German war, after the loss of Sedan, a French officer came up to the then Crown Prince and exclaimed, “Ah, sir! what a defeat! what a misfortune! I am ashamed of being a prisoner. I have lost everything.” “No, indeed,” was the magnanimous reply; “after you have fought like a brave soldier, you have not lost your honour.” But there is a defeat that is wholly ignoble and demoralising. It has been courted by a proud self-confidence and precipitated by an unreasoning recklessness. Self-induced, it is the bitterest drop in the cup of the vanquished that the ruin in the midst of which he moans is his own rash handiwork. “The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity, but a wounded spirit who can bear?” (Pro_18:14).
LESSONS.—
1. Pride is the sure precursor of a fall.
2. Military genius and the strength of armies are impotent when opposed to Divine vengeance.
3. Humble trust in God gives dignity and strength to the kingly office even in disaster.
GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES
Eze_30:21. The Lessons of Suffering.
1. Should lead us to reflect how far our suffering has been brought on by our wilful sinfulness.
2. Should induce us to examine the principles on which our conduct has been based.
3. May lead to salutary repentance.
4. Are unnoticed by the soul blinded with pride.
—“It is in vain that men try to bind up and heal the wound that God inflicts. Stroke shall fall upon stroke in rapid succession whensoever God is against men. The very weakest instruments are sufficient, when strengthened by Him, to execute God’s vengeance; and He has at His disposal all the powers that are in heaven and earth. How foolish, then, it is for any to remain in a state of enmity with God!”—Fausset.
Eze_30:22. “Thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I am against Pharaoh.” The Opposition of Jehovah.
1. Is terribly real and active.
2. Must convince us we are wrong, and that we must change our attitude towards Him.
3. Cannot be successfully resisted by the mightiest human combinations.
4. Can be propitiated only by humble and penitent submission.
Eze_30:23; Eze_30:26. National Unity.
1. Unreal when based only on kingly and military supremacy.
2. Must be founded in the righteousness of the individual life.
3. Is broken into fragments and scattered when God is ignored and openly defied.
Eze_30:24-25. “I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon.” The Agent of Divine Vengeance.
1. Is prepared and strengthened for the work.
2. May be unconscious of the significance of the punishment he inflicts.
3. Can do no more than he is permitted.
4. May himself become the victim of a similar vengeance.
Eze_30:24. “He shall groan with the groanings of a deadly wounded man.” The Moan of the Defeated.
1. A familiar experience of baffled humanity.
2. Those who are most elated in the pride of prosperity are most abject and disheartened in adversity.
3. Appeals to the compassion of the sternest conqueror.
Eze_30:26. “The true God, despised by Egypt from ancient times, is thereby to come by His rights regarding them. If He be the true Jehovah, the personal Being, the absolute Essence, He must necessarily be glorified, if not by their action, yet by their passion.”—Hengstenberg.
—“They would hardly believe it, and therefore are so oft assured it” (cf. Eze_30:23).—Trapp.
—“We are here struck with the exact accomplishment of the prophecies against Egypt, against its cities and its princes, by the wars of Assyria and surrounding nations. When the measure was full the visitation came. Therefore Isaiah, Nahum, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel must have been inspired by Him to whom futurity is without a veil. What instruction, then, should the ruins of ancient cities, where powerful kings once reigned, suggest to the flourishing cities of Europe who imitate them in every species of crime and forget the Lord, who does what He pleases in the heavens above and in the earth below?”—Sutcliffe.
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.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On vv1, 20 The Invasion of Egypt by Nebuchadrezzar
The Invasion of Egypt by Nebuchadrezzar
No special enemy of Egypt has been mentioned in Eze_29:1-16, but the king of Babylon is now pointed out as its conqueror.
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5. Libya, and Lydia] RV 'Put and Lud': see on Eze_27:10. Chub] an unknown people. The land that is in league] perhaps we should read, 'the land of the Cherethites' (Philistia).
9. In ships] ascending the Nile to Ethiopia.
13. Noph] Memphis, the capital of Lower Egypt.
14. Zoan] Tanis, an ancient Egyptian city (Num_13:22). No] No-ammon, or Thebes, the capital of Upper Egypt.
15. Sin] Pelusium, a frontier city at the NE. extremity of the Delta of the Nile.
17. Aven] On, or Heliopolis: see. Gen_41:45, Gen_41:50; Gen_46:20. It lay on the E. edge of the Delta. Pi-beseth] Bubastis, a city of Lower Egypt.
18. Tehaphnehes (or Tahpanhes)] Daphnæ, a city on the E. frontier of Lower Egypt: see Jer_43:7; Jer_44:1; Jer_46:14.
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 On vv3, 20 the day of the Lord Day (of Jehovah) (See…
the day of the Lord Day (of Jehovah) (See Scofield "Isa 2:12").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 10, 20 Announcing the Doom upon Egypt and its Allies
Announcing the Doom upon Egypt and its Allies
v. 1. The word of the Lord came again unto me, the time, in this instance, not being indicated, saying,
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v. 2. Son of man, prophesy and say, in another message directed against Egypt, Thus saith the Lord God, Howl ye! Woe worth the day! or, "Alas for the day!" V 3. For the day is near, even the day of the Lord is near; the day of doom decided upon by Him, a cloudy day, the clouds well representative of the storm of His wrath which would break upon the entire country; it shall be the time of the heathen, when they would experience His judgment as his vengeance went forth upon them.
v. 4. And the sword shall come upon Egypt, in bloody uproar and slaughter, and great pain, the most severe anguish, shall be in Ethiopia, when the slain shall fall in Egypt, and they shall take away her multitude, the wealth amassed within her borders, and her foundations shall be broken down, her very existence as state being undermined.
v. 5. Ethiopia, the country bounding upon Egypt on the south, and Libya, a nation toward the west, and Lydia, another African desert state, and all the mingled people, literally, "the strange people," those allied with the Egyptians and serving together with their soldiers, and Chub, probably Nubia, and the men of the land that is in league, literally, the sons of the land of the covenant," an expression taken by some commentators to refer to the Jews who migrated to Egypt, carrying Jeremiah with them, Jeremiah 42-44, shall fall with them by the sword, sharing the fate of the entire country.
v. 6. Thus saith the Lord, They also that uphold Egypt, chiefly the rulers and the idols upon whom the Egyptians depended, shall fall, and the pride of her power, her proud might, shall come down; from the tower of Syene, rather, "from Migdol to Syene," 29:10, shall they fall in it by the sword, saith the Lord God.
v. 7. And they shall be desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities shall be in the midst of the cities that are wasted. Cf.Ezekiel 29:12.
v. 8. And they shall know that I am the Lord when I have set a fire in Egypt, the fire of bitter warfare, carried on by a fierce people and with relentless cruelty, and when all her helpers, allies and all others upon whom Egypt depended, shall be destroyed.
v. 9. In that day shall messengers go forth from Me in ships, namely, Egyptians fleeing before the calamity threatening their country and now acting as messengers of the Lord in the sense that they could now speak from their own experience concerning the Lord’s judgments, to make the careless Ethiopians afraid, to fill them with a wholesome dread of the punishment threatening them, and great pain shall come upon them, a severe anguish, as in the day of Egypt, when the doom struck the mightier nation; for, lo, it cometh, it was inevitable, because announced by the Lord, whose word is ever fulfilled just as He has planned His punishments upon all disobedient people, to come at the time determined upon by Him.
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 On vv1, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 15, 17, 20, 22, 25 General Information:
General Information:
Ezekiel tells about a message that Yahweh gave him.
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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"
Wail
cry out with grief
Woe is the coming day
This exclamation expresses the fear that people would feel about a certain day when terrible and frightening things will happen. AT: "Oh that day" or "Oh, what a frightening day is coming" (See: Exclamations)
The day is near
"That day is soon" or "It will soon be that day"
The day is near for Yahweh
It is implied that on that day, Yahweh will punish people. AT: "It will soon be the day when Yahweh will punish you" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
a day of clouds
Dark storm clouds represent danger and fear. AT: "It will be like a day with dark clouds" or "It will be frightening like a day with dark clouds" (See: Metaphor)
a time of doom for nations
The abstract noun "doom" can be translated with the phrase "terrible things will happen." AT: "a time when terrible things will happen to the nations" (See: Abstract Nouns)
translationWords
word of God
Son of Man
prophet
Lord Yahweh
woe
nation
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 On vv1, 6, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24 30:1-19 This third message against Egypt, using the form…
30:1-19 This third message against Egypt, using the form of a lament, essentially repeats the content of the first message (29:1-16). Judgment was to be poured out on Egypt and her allies.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.