Ezekiel 32:31

Pharaoh shall see them, and shall be comforted over all his multitude, even Pharaoh and all his army slain by the sword, saith the Lord GOD.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(31) Shall be comforted.—Comp. Ezekiel 31:16.

Here closes the series of prophecies against foreign nations. It is true that there are other prophecies against them in Ezekiel 35, 38, 39; but these, as already said, have much more of the character of promises to Israel than of simple denunciation of their enemies. The greater part of this series was uttered between the investment and the close of the siege of Jerusalem, a time during which the prophet was to be dumb towards the children of his people, and at the close of which his mouth was again to be opened. At this time, therefore, his prophetic gifts were appropriately exercised towards foreigners, and at the close, with the renewal of his instructions to Israel, a fresh charge is given as a sort of fresh induction to his prophetic office (Ezekiel 33:1-30).

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

32:17-32 Divers nations are mentioned as gone down to the grave before Egypt, who are ready to give her a scornful reception; these nations had been lately ruined and wasted. But though Judah and Jerusalem were about this time ruined and laid waste, yet they are not mentioned here. Though they suffered the same affliction, and by the same hand, yet the kind design for which they were afflicted, and the mercy God reserved for them, altered its nature. It was not to them a going down to the pit, as it was to the heathen. Pharaoh shall see, and be comforted; but the comfort wicked ones have after death, is poor comfort, not real, but only in fancy. The view this prophecy gives of ruined states shows something of this present world, and the empire of death in it. Come and see the calamitous state of human life. As if men did not die fast enough, they are ingenious at finding out ways to destroy one another. Also of the other world; though the destruction of nations as such, seems chiefly intended, here is plain allusion to the everlasting ruin of impenitent sinners. How are men deceived by Satan! What are the objects they pursue through scenes of bloodshed, and their many sins? Surely man disquiets himself in vain, whether he pursues wealth, fame, power, or pleasure. The hour cometh, when all that are in their graves shall hear the voice of Christ, and shall come forth; those that have done good to the resurrection of life, and those that have done evil to the resurrection of damnation.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Comforted - By the knowledge that his ruin is no more than that of every world-power.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

31. comforted—with the melancholy satisfaction of not being alone, but of having other kingdoms companions in his downfall. This shall be his only comfort—a very poor one!

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Hophra shall go to them by a like destruction, and, as he saw them all ruined as he was, should be comforted, rejoice that others before him met with the same fatal end and whatever comfort this might be, it is all he shall ever have, did he know all those things and persons that are here represented and personated to us.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Pharaoh shall see them, and shall be comforted over his multitude,.... That is, when Pharaoh is brought to the grave, and into the state of the dead, he shall look about him, and see who lie by him; and he shall behold the above mentioned kings of Assyria, Persia, Idumea, and the princes of Tyre and Zidon, and all their mighty armies, generals and soldiers, in the same condition with himself; and this shall be some solace to him in his own death, and at the loss of so great a kingdom, such numerous subjects, and a vast army, that others as rich, as powerful as himself, lie in the same low and miserable condition; though such comfort as this must be poor comfort indeed! and yet this is all the comfort wicked men have in hell, that they have company with them there:

even Pharaoh and all his army slain by the sword. Pharaohhophra and his numerous army slain by the sword of the king of Babylon. This explains who is meant by Pharaoh and his multitude: and that this would certainly be his case it is added,

saith the Lord God; he hath spoken it, and it shall be done; whose words are continued in the next verse.

Geneva Study Bible

Pharaoh shall see them, and shall be {t} comforted over all his multitude, even Pharaoh and all his army slain by the sword, saith the Lord GOD.

(t) As the wicked rejoice when they see others partakers of their miseries.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

31. comforted over all his multitude] The Heb. order is: over all his multitude, slain with the sword, even Pharaoh and all his army, saith, &c. The words “slain with … his army” are wanting in LXX. On “comforted,” cf. Ezekiel 14:22, Ezekiel 31:16. Pharaoh will be “comforted” by the sight of all these nations in the pit, suffering the same humiliation as himself and his multitude.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 31. - Shall be comforted, etc. (comp. for the thought, Ezekiel 31:16). That shall be all that he will have to console him. As before, other nations were comforted by the downfall of Egypt, so Egypt in her turn finds her comfort in their downfall. All are sharers alike in the fiend-like temper which exults in the miseries of others. Ewald and Hitzig, here as there, take the word as in the sense of "mourning over." As to the extent and manner in which the predictions of the chapter have been fulfilled, see notes on Ezekiel 29. - 31. Sufficient evidence has been given that Egypt was probably invaded and conquered by Nebuchadnezzar. The silence of the Greek historians, and notably of Herodotus, as to any such invasion goes for little or nothing. He could not read the Egyptian records, and derived his knowledge from the priests through an interpreter. They, after their manner, would draw a veil over all disasters, and so, while he records the revolution which placed Amasis upon the throne of Hophra, he is silent as to any invasion, and does not even mention the battle of Carchemish.



Ezekiel 32:31

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Sixth and last strophe. - Ezekiel 32:31. Pharaoh will see them, and comfort himself over all his multitude. Pharaoh and all his army are slain with the sword, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. Ezekiel 32:32. For I caused him to spread terror in the land of the living, therefore is he laid in the midst of uncircumcised, those slain with the sword. Pharaoh and all his multitude, is the saying of the Lord Jehovah. - In these verses the application to Egypt follows. Pharaoh will see in the nether world all the greater and smaller heathen nations with their rulers; and when he sees them all given up to the judgment of death, he will comfort himself over the fate which has fallen upon himself and his army, as he will perceive that he could not expect any better lot than that of the other rulers of the world. נחם על, to comfort oneself, as in Ezekiel 31:16 and Ezekiel 14:22. Hitzig's assertion, that נחם never signifies to comfort oneself, is incorrect (see the comm. on Ezekiel 14:22). נתתּי את־חתּיתו, I have given terror of him, i.e., I have made him an instrument of terror. The Keri חתּיתי arose from a misunderstanding. The Chetib is confirmed by Ezekiel 32:24 and Ezekiel 32:26. In Ezekiel 32:32 the ode is brought to a close by returning even in expression to Ezekiel 32:19 and Ezekiel 32:20.

If, now, we close with a review of the whole of the contents of the words of God directed against Egypt, in all of them is the destruction of the might of Pharaoh and Egypt as a world-power foretold. And this prophecy has been completely fulfilled. As Kliefoth has most truly observed, "one only needs to enter the pyramids of Egypt and its catacombs to see that the glory of the Pharaohs has gone down into Sheol. And it is equally certain that this destruction of the glory of ancient Egypt dates from the times of the Babylonio-Persian empire. Moreover, this destruction was so thorough, that even to the New Egypt of the Ptolemies the character of the Old Egypt was a perfect enigma, a thing forgotten and incomprehensible." But if Ezekiel repeatedly speaks of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon as executing this judgment upon Egypt, we must bear in mind that here, as in the case of Tyre (see the comm. on Ezekiel 28:1-19), Ezekiel regards Nebuchadnezzar as the instrument of the righteous punishment of God in general, and discerns in what he accomplishes the sum of all that in the course of ages has been gradually fulfilling itself in history. At the same time, it is equally certain that this view of the prophet would have no foundation in truth unless Nebuchadnezzar really did conquer Egypt and lay it waste, and the might and glory of this ancient empire were so shattered thereby, that it never could recover its former greatness, but even after the turning of its captivity, i.e., after its recovery from the deadly wounds which the imperial monarchy of Babylonia and afterwards of Persia inflicted upon it, still remained a lowly kingdom, which could "no more rule over the nations" (Ezekiel 29:13-16). Volney, however, in his Recherch. nouv. sur l'hist. anc. (III pp. 151ff.), and Hitzig (Ezekiel p. 231), dispute the conquest and devastation of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar, because the Greek historians, with Herodotus (ii. 161ff.) at their head, make no allusion whatever to an invasion of Egypt; and their statements are even opposed to such an occurrence. But the silence of Greek historians, especially of Herodotus, is a most "miserable" argument. The same historians do not say a word about the defeat of Necho by Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish; and yet even Hitzig accepts this as an indisputable fact. Herodotus and his successors derived their accounts of Egypt from the communications of Egyptian priests, who suppressed everything that was humiliating to the pride of Egypt, and endeavoured to cover it up with their accounts of glorious deeds which the Pharaohs had performed. But Hitzig has by no means proved that the statements of the Greeks are at variance with the assumption of a Chaldean invasion of Egypt, whilst he has simply rejected but not refuted the attempts of Perizonius, Vitringa, Hvernick, and others, to reconcile the biblical narrative of the conquest of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar with the accounts given by Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, and other Greeks, concerning the mighty feats of Necho, and his being slain by Amasis. The remark that, in the description given by Herodotus, Amasis appears as an independent king by the side of Cambyses, only less powerful than the Persian monarch, proves nothing more, even assuming the correctness of the fact, than that Amasis had made Egypt once more independent of Babylonia on the sudden overthrow of the Chaldean monarchy.

The conquest of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar, after the attitude which Pharaoh Necho assumed towards the Babylonian empire, and even attempted to maintain in the time of Zedekiah by sending an army to the relief of Jerusalem when besieged by the Chaldeans, is not only extremely probable in itself, but confirmed by testimony outside the Bible. Even if no great importance can be attached to the notice of Megasthenes, handed down by Strabo (xv. 1. 6) and Josephus (c. Ap. i. 20): "he says that he (Nebuchadnezzar) conquered the greater part of Libya and Iberia;" Josephus not only quotes from Berosus (l.c. i. 19) to the effect that "the Babylonian got possession of Egypt, Syria, Phoenicia, Arabia," but, on the ground of such statements, relates the complete fulfilment of the prophecies of Scripture, saying, in Antt. x. 9. 7, with reference to Nebuchadnezzar, "he fell upon Egypt to conquer it. And the reigning king he slew; and having appointed another in his place, made those Jews prisoners who had hitherto resided there, and led them into Babylon." And even if Josephus does not give his authority in this case, the assertion that he gathered this from the prophecies of Jeremiah is untrue; because, immediately before the words we have quoted, he says that what Jeremiah had prophesied (Jeremiah 43:10 and Jeremiah 44) had thus come to pass; making a distinction, therefore, between prophecy and history. And suspicion is not to be cast upon this testimony by such objections as that Josephus does not mention the name of the Egyptian king, or state precisely the time when Egypt was conquered, but merely affirms in general terms that it was after the war with the Ammonites and Moabites.