Ezekiel 29
Pharaoh, monster crocodile
God goes fishing for Pharaoh
1The LORD gave me a message in the winter, [1] 10 years after Babylon exiled Judah’s King Jehoiachin and others:2Human, turn in the direction of the King of Egypt, the Pharaoh. Deliver this prophecy against him and the rest of Egypt. 3Tell them the Lord God said this:
You’re on the wrong side
Because I’m against you,
Pharaoh, king of Egypt,
Monstrous crocodile
Stretched out in your irrigation channels.
You say, “This Nile River belongs to me.
I made these channels for myself.”
4You’re just another fish I’ll hook.
I’ll pull you right out of your own channels.
I’ll net you and the school of fish with you. [2]
5Then I’ll throw you in the desert,
You and all the fish swimming with you.
You’ll flop yourself to death in the dirt.
No one’s going to save you.
Birds and wild animals will pick you to pieces.
6Then, everyone in Egypt will know I did that to you.
You were a fake ally to Israel.
Leaning on you for support
Was like leaning on a cracked cane.
7When they leaned on you,
You snapped and cut them up,
Filling them with splinters.
8For this, I’m sending an army to kill your people and the animals. 9The invaders will devastate Egypt so remarkably that people will know that I was behind this and that I’m the LORD. You said, “The Nile is mine. I made it.”
10So, what you made is an enemy: me. I stand opposed to you and your river and its streams and irrigation channels. I’m turning your nation into ruins, from the northern town of Migdol [3] to Aswan [4] in the south, all the way to the border of Ethiopia. [5] 11No human or animal will travel there for 40 years. [6] 12Egypt will become desolate for 40 years, filled with ghost towns. Egyptians will scatter to other countries.
Welcome home demoted Egyptians
13After 40 years, I’ll bring the scattered Egyptians home. 14I’ll give them back their lands, but they won’t be a major power or an influential nation anymore.15They’ll become a tiny-tot, bottom-of-the barrel nation that everyone else looks down on. They’ll be so small that they’ll never again push any other nation around. 16Israel will never again turn to Egypt for support. They’ll remember what happened when they trusted them earlier. [7] Israel will know that I’m the Lord God.
Payday: God gives Egypt to Babylon
17The LORD gave me a message in the springtime, [8] during King Jehoiachin’s 27th year in exile. He said:18Human, Babylon’s King Nebuchadnezzar pushed his army to the limit trying to capture Tyre. They worked so hard they lost their hair [9] and rubbed their skin raw. But for all their work, they got nothing from Tyre to cover their expenses. 19So, I’m going to give them Egypt. The soldiers will find a rich payday there. They’ll plunder to their heart’s desire.
20I’m doing this for the Babylonian king because he has been working for me lately. He deserves a payday for that. This is the Lord God talking. 21When this happens, I will make Israel begin to grow stronger. And they will remember what you said about this and will know that I am the one who made it happen, and that I am the LORD. [10]
Footnotes
Perhaps January 587, a year and a half before Babylon leveled Jerusalem in the summer of 586. The Hebrew text sets the date more literally “in the 10th year, 10th month, 12th day.” Most scholars say Ezekiel is probably working from the year when Judah’s 18-year-old King Jehoichin and others were deported to Babylon in 597 BC. The 10th month on the Jewish lunar calendar is Tevet (falling between December-January).
The Hebrew text more literally says God will pull the king fish out of the water “with all the fish…sticking to your scales.” That’s difficult to imagine since fish scales aren’t like double-sided duct tape.
Location of Migdol is unknown. The word Migdol shows up in Egyptian writings to identify several military sites: watchtowers or forts. An Egyptian letter from Pharaoh Seti II (reigned 1204-1198 BC) reports one in the Sinai desert near Wadi Tumilat, which ran by Succoth, one of the cities the Israelites passed through (Exodus 12:37). A wadi is a desert stream bed that sometimes runs dry.
The ancient name was Syene, an Egyptian city in the south, near Egypt’s border with Ethiopia. The identity linking Syene to the area comes from one of the famous Dead Sea Scrolls copied and hidden in caves about 2,000 years ago.
Cush was the ancient name of the region. In the Bible it usually refers to what is now southern Egypt and Ethiopia. But some Bible experts say it may refer to the land settled by the descendants of “Cush” (Genesis 10:7-8). They settled in Babylonia, in what is now Iraq.
“Hyperbole” and “superlative” are words Bible scholars use to describe this prediction of what never happened this literally. They suggest Ezekiel was comparing Egypt’s suffering to the 40 years in the desert that Moses and the Hebrew ancestors of today’s Jews suffered during their exodus out of Egypt. Like the people of Israel, Egyptians left Egypt, an exodus of their own.
Egypt started to come to Jerusalem’s rescue when Babylonians invaded in 588 BC, but they turned back to home (Jeremiah 37:7; 2 Kings 18:21).
Ezekiel said he got the message on the first day of the first month of the year on the Jewish lunar calendar, Nisan (between March-April). The year would have been about 571 BC, probably in March.
Worked themselves bald? Never heard of it. But we could worry ourselves bald trying to explain it. Some scholars guess the baldness came from chaffing while possibly hauling material to build a causeway to Tyre’s fortress island half a mile off shore. Sounds like a stretch. Perhaps Ezekiel was simply trying to say the soldiers gave it their best effort, yet failed to capture Tyre. It took Alexander the Great to finish the job.
This entire verse is a pair of guesses. The more literal statements are “I will make a horn sprout in Israel” and “I will open your lips.” Scholars are all left guessing what to make of this. Is the “horn” a leader, a messiah, or strength in general? And what does it mean that Ezekiel will start talking? He has been talking for a long time since his previous episode of inability to speak (Ezekiel 24:25-27). But perhaps it means people would take him seriously now that attacks on Tyre and on Egypt he started predicting over a decade ago finally took place.
Discussion Questions
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