November 15

We finished Ezekiel’s prophecy that Jerusalem was in trouble; Ezekiel 1-24.  Now we are well into the prophecy against Egypt.  They too were going to fall due to their minds being set against Israel for basically their entire existence. Ezekiel gave six distinct visions against Egypt.  We read the first one tast week. Today we read the second through the sixth.

30 – Ezekiel is speaking that Egypt is about to be swarmed upon by Babylon. As we read last week, they are finishing a 13-year campaign that decimated Tyre but yielded very little pay. They are victorious leaving Tyre and heading to Egypt, but they are unsatisfied and longing for a paystreak. So they will enter Egypt doubly eager to strip Egypt and will do so shortly.  They will leave bodies of Egyptians everywhere. Neighboring towns will be flattened, nations who befriend or do commerce with Egypt will suffer also.  “The Prince” will not be found. The idols will be smashed.  Everything burnable will be burned.  For hundreds of miles all up and down the Nile, there will be death and fires burning everything. All men will die and all the women will be taken away as slaves. The Egyptians will scatter. The Lord has spoken.  The “broken arms of Pharaoh” is the army that will be conquered, and rendered useless.  Pharaoh’s defense will be gone. This occurred in the spring of 587 B.C.  This event is told of in Ezekiel’s second and third visions [Jerusalem had barely over a year before it too would be emptied out.] Jeremiah 37:5-9 is a contemporary story that is concurrent with these chapters., btw.

31 – In His fourth vision; God is speaking as Ezekiel is writing and Egypt is being compared to Assyria.  The trees are tall, strong, green and lush.  The water is plentiful. The place is fruitful and the people are powerful. Assyria was perceived as so powerful and Egypt had admired Assyria.  Egypt thinks it is mighty like Assyria too. … and Assyria fell like a crumbled building when Babylon rushed in.  Guess what Egypt – you are going down too.  Your pride and arrogance and lofty attitude is going to get cut down and swiftly so.  Babylon is being unleashed on you. And you will die by the sword.

32 – It seems that the first 16 verses are a permanent funeral march for Egypt.  It’s a dirge of the gravest sort.  Think of their history. Abraham was in Egypt some 1400-1500 years prior.  The pyramids outside Cairo stand today as memories of this era; The Old Kingdom. Some the the Pyramids there predate Noah’s flood!  There’s the Middle Kingdom 500+ miles up the Nile.  They were overthrown by Hyksos as was spoken of in Exodus 1:8 after which there arose a new Pharaoh in a New Kingdom who did not know Joseph.  This New Kingdom was 1550 – 712 B.C.  This remnant of Egypt, however, that Babylon would overrun and leave as food for birds, would be the end of Egypt. They would never rise to world prominence again.  What’s left of them even today are stones and artifacts and a few gems that enamor the world.  We’ll grant them that, but it is a banished empire that is at its end. They have been arrogant against the God of Abraham and are therefore over with soon.  The 15 final verses are that of Egypt being relegated to the realm of the dead.  The coffins, the embalming rooms, the pyramids [of which all were tombs] were Egypt’s obsession with the dead.  And dead they would be.  Remember Jesus saying to “let the dead bury the dead”?  He is the God of the Living.  Egypt’s culture was all about the dead.  It had to go.