1The Word of Jehovah came unto me again, saying, 2Son of man, prophesy and say, Thus says the Lord Jehovah: Howl, Alas for the day! 3For the day is near, even the day of Jehovah is near; it will be a day of clouds, the time of the nations. 4And the sword shall come upon Egypt, and great anguish shall be in Ethiopia, when the slain shall fall in Egypt, and they take away her wealth, and her foundations are broken down. 5Ethiopia, Libya, Lydia, all the mixed people, Chub, and the men of the lands who are allied, shall fall with them by the sword. 6Thus says Jehovah: Those who support Egypt shall fall, and the pride of her power shall come down. From Migdol to Syene those within her shall fall by the sword, declares the Lord Jehovah. 7And they shall be desolate in the midst of the desolate lands, and her cities shall be in the midst of the cities that are laid waste. 8And they will know that I am Jehovah, when I have set a fire in Egypt and all her helpers have been destroyed. 9In that day messengers shall go forth from Me in ships to make the confident Ethiopians afraid, and great anguish shall come upon them, as in the day of Egypt; for indeed it is coming! 10Thus says the Lord Jehovah: I will also bring an end to the multitude of Egypt by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. 11He and his people with him, the most ruthless of the nations, shall be brought to destroy the land; they shall draw their swords against Egypt, and fill the land with the slain. 12I will make the rivers dry, and sell the land into the hand of evil ones; I will make the land waste, and all that is in it, by the hand of strangers. I, Jehovah, have spoken. 13Thus says the Lord Jehovah: I will also destroy the idols, and remove the images from Noph; there shall no longer be a prince of the land of Egypt; and I will put fear in the land of Egypt. 14I will make Pathros desolate, set fire to Zoan, and execute judgments in No. 15I will pour My fury on Sin, the strength of Egypt; and I will cut off the multitude of No, 16and set a fire in Egypt; Sin shall writhe in anguish, No shall be split open, and Noph shall be in daily distress. 17The young men of Aven and Pibeseth shall fall by the sword, and these cities shall go into captivity. 18At Tahpanhes the day shall also be darkened, when I break the yokes of Egypt there. And her arrogant strength shall come to an end in her; as for her, a cloud shall cover her, and her daughters shall go into captivity. 19Thus I will execute judgments on Egypt, and they shall know that I am Jehovah. 20And it came to pass in the eleventh year, in the first month, on the seventh day of the month, that the Word of Jehovah came unto me, saying, 21Son of man, I have broken the arm of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and see, it has not been bound up for healing, nor a bandage set to bind it, to make it strong to hold a sword. 22Therefore thus says the Lord Jehovah: Behold, I am against Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and will break his arms, both the strong one and the one that was broken; and I will cause the sword to fall out of his hand. 23I will scatter Egypt among the nations, and disperse them throughout the earth. 24And I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon and put My sword in his hand; but I will break Pharaoh's arms, and he will groan before him with the groanings of a mortally wounded man. 25Thus I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, and the arms of Pharaoh shall fall down. And they shall know that I am Jehovah, when I put My sword into the hand of the king of Babylon and he shall have stretched it out against the land of Egypt. 26And I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations and disperse them throughout the earth. And they shall know that I am Jehovah.
Jamieson Fausset Brown Bible Commentary 2 CONTINUATION OF THE PROPHECIES AGAINST EGYPT. (Eze. 30:1-26)
Woe worth the day!--that is, Alas for the day!
3 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 (
Joel 1:15;
Joel 2:1-
Joel 2:2; Joel 3:1-21;
Obad 1:15).
4 pain--literally, "pangs with trembling as of a woman in childbirth."
5 the mingled people--the mercenary troops of Egypt from various lands, mostly from the interior of Africa (compare
Ezek 27:10;
Jer 25:20,
Jer 25:24;
Jer 46:9,
Jer 46:21).
Chub--the people named Kufa on the monuments [HAVERNICK], a people considerably north of Palestine [WILKINSON]; Coba or Chobat, a city of Mauritania [MAURER].
men of the land that is in league--too definite an expression to mean merely, "men in league" with Egypt; rather, "sons of the land of the covenant," that is, the Jews who migrated to Egypt and carried Jeremiah with them (Jer. 42:1-44:30). Even they shall not escape (
Jer 42:22;
Jer 44:14).
6 from the tower of Syene--(see on
Ezek 29:10).
7 in the midst of . . . countries . . . desolate--Egypt shall fare no better than they (
Ezek 29:10).
9 messengers . . . in ships to . . . Ethiopians-- (
Isa 18:1-
Isa 18:2). The cataracts interposing between them and Egypt should not save them. Egyptians "fleeing from before Me" in My execution of judgment, as "messengers" in "skiffs" ("vessels of bulrushes,"
Isa 18:2) shall go up the Nile as far as navigable, to announce the advance of the Chaldeans.
as in the day of Egypt--The day of Ethiopia's "pain" shall come shortly, as Egypt's day came.
10 the multitude--the large population.
12 rivers--the artificial canals made from the Nile for irrigation. The drying up of these would cause scarcity of grain, and so prepare the way for the invaders (
Isa 19:5-
Isa 19:10).
13 Noph--Memphis, the capital of Middle Egypt, and the stronghold of "idols." Though no record exists of Nebuchadnezzar's "destroying" these, we know from HERODOTUS and others, that Cambyses took Pelusium, the key of Egypt, by placing before his army dogs, cats, &c., all held sacred in Egypt, so that no Egyptian would use any weapon against them. He slew Apis, the sacred ox, and burnt other idols of Egypt.
no more a prince--referring to the anarchy that prevailed in the civil wars between Apries and Amasis at the time of Nebuchadnezzar's invasion. There shall no more be a prince of the land of Egypt, ruling the whole country; or, no independent prince.
14 Pathros--Upper Egypt, with "No" or Thebes its capital (famed for its stupendous buildings, of which grand ruins remain), in antithesis to Zoan or Tanis, a chief city in Lower Egypt, within the Delta.
15 Sin--that is, Pelusium, the frontier fortress on the northeast, therefore called "the strength (that is, the key) of Egypt." It stands in antithesis to No or Thebes at the opposite end of Egypt; that is, I will afflict Egypt from one end to the other.
16 distresses daily--MAURER translates, "enemies during the day," that is, open enemies who do not wait for the covert of night to make their attacks (compare
Jer 6:4;
Jer 15:8). However, the Hebrew, though rarely, is sometimes rendered (see
Ps 13:2) as in English Version.
17 Aven--meaning "vanity" or "iniquity": applied, by a slight change of the Hebrew name, to On or Heliopolis, in allusion to its idolatry. Here stood the temple of the sun, whence it was called in Hebrew, Beth-shemesh (
Jer 43:13). The Egyptian hieroglyphics call it, Re Athom, the sun, the father of the gods, being impersonate in Athom or Adam, the father of mankind.
Pi-beseth--that is, Bubastis, in Lower Egypt, near the Pelusiac branch of the Nile: notorious for the worship of the goddess of the same name (Coptic, Pasht), the granite stones of whose temple still attest its former magnificence.
these cities--rather, as the Septuagint, "the women," namely, of Aven and Pi-beseth, in antithesis to "the young men." So in
Ezek 30:18, "daughters shall go into captivity" [MAURER].
18 Tehaphnehes--called from the queen of Egypt mentioned in
1Kgs 11:19. The same as Daphne, near Pelusium, a royal residence of the Pharaohs (
Jer 43:7,
Jer 43:9). Called Hanes
Isa 30:4).
break . . . the yokes of Egypt--that is, the tyrannical supremacy which she exercised over other nations. Compare "bands of their yoke" (
Ezek 34:7).
a cloud--namely, of calamity.
20 Here begins the earlier vision, not long after that in the twenty-ninth chapter, about three months before the taking of Jerusalem, as to Pharaoh and his kingdom.
21 broken . . . arm of Pharaoh-- (
Ps 37:17;
Jer 48:25). Referring to the defeat which Pharaoh-hophra sustained from the Chaldeans, when trying to raise the siege of Jerusalem (
Jer 37:5,
Jer 37:7); and previous to the deprivation of Pharaoh-necho of all his conquests from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates (
2Kgs 24:7;
Jer 46:2); also to the Egyptian disaster in Cyrene.
22 arms--Not only the "one arm" broken already (
Ezek 30:21) was not to be healed, but the other two should be broken. Not a corporal wound, but a breaking of the power of Pharaoh is intended.
cause . . . sword to fall out of . . . hand--deprive him of the resources of making war.
Not that Egypt was, like Assyria, utterly to cease to be, but it was, like Assyria, to lose its prominence in the empire of the world.