3. EGYPT (CH. 29–32)

EZEKIEL 29:1. In the tenth year, in the tenth [month], on the twelfth of the month, came the word of Jehovah to me, saying, 2Son of man, Set thy face upon [against] 3Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and prophesy upon him, and upon all Egypt! Speak and say, Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I [come] upon thee, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his streams, who saith, To 4me [belongs] my stream, and I, I have made myself. And I give rings in thy jaws, and hang the fish of thy streams, on thy scales, and draw thee out of the midst of thy streams, and every fish of thy streams [which] hangs on thy scales; 5And I set thee free [drive thee] into the wilderness, thee and every fish of thy streams; upon the plains of the field shalt thou fall, thou shalt not be picked up, and not gathered; to the beast [living creatures] of the earth and to the fowl of the heaven I have given thee for food. 6And all the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am Jehovah! Because they were a staff of reed to the house of Israel,—7When they take hold of thee by thy hand, thou art broken, and splittest to them every shoulder [the whole shoulder]; and when they lean upon thee, thou art shattered, and lamest for them all loins,—8Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I bring upon thee a sword, and root out of thee man and beast. 9And the land of Egypt is [shall be] for desolation and a waste, and they know that I am Jehovah! 10Because He said, The stream [belongs] to me, and I, I have made it, Therefore, behold, I am against thee, and against thy streams, and I give the land of Egypt for deserts of waste of desolation, from Migdol to Syene [seveneh], and even to 11the borders of Cush. Foot of man shall not pass through it, and foot of beast 12shall not pass through it, and it shall not be inhabited forty years. And I have given the land of Egypt [for] desolation in the midst of desolate lands, and its cities shall be desolate forty years in the midst of desolate cities, and I disperse 13Egypt among the heathen and scatter them in the lands. For thus saith the Lord Jehovah, At the end of forty years will I gather Egypt out of the peoples 14whither they were dispersed: And I turn the misery of Egypt, and bring them back to the land of Pathros, to the land of their birth; and they are there a low 15kingdom. Lower than the kingdoms shall it be, and it shall not lift itself up any more above the heathen; and I diminish them, so that they do not rule among the heathen [have dominion over them]. 16And it shall no more be for confidence to the house of Israel, a remembrancer of iniquity, when they turn after them; and they know that I am the Lord Jehovah. 17And it came to pass in the seven and twentieth year, in the first [month], on the first of the month, the word of Jehovah came to me, saying, 18Son of man, Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon has caused his army to serve a great service against Tyre: every head became bald, and every shoulder peeled; and there was not reward for him and his host out of Tyre for the work, which he has wrought against it [the city]. 19Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Behold, I give Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon the land of Egypt, and he takes away its tumult, and plunders its spoil, and seizes its prey; and it is a reward to his host. As his hire for which he has wrought against it [Tyre], 20I have given him the land of Egypt, because they did 21[it] for Me—sentence of the Lord Jehovah. In that day will I make a horn to bud forth to the house of Israel, and I will give thee the opening of the mouth in the midst of them; and they know that I am Jehovah.

Ezekiel 29:1. Sept.: ... μια τ.μηνος—

Ezekiel 29:2. ... μια τ.μηνος—

Ezekiel 29:3. ... στηρισον τ. προσωπον.

Ezekiel 29:4. ... τας παγιδας … ταις λετισιν σου τροσξολληθησονται.

Ezekiel 29:5. και καταβαλω σε ἐν ταχει κ. ταντας—

Ezekiel 29:7. Sept.: ... … τῃ χειρι αὐτων, ἐθλασθης, κ. ὁτε ἐπεκροτησεν ἐπ’ αὐτους πασα χειρ κ. ὁτε ἐπανεπαυσαυτο ἐπι σε,συνετριβης κ. συνεκλασας αὐτων—Vulg.: … te manu … et lacerasti … et dissolvisti omnes renes eorum.

Ezekiel 29:10. ... χαι ἐτι ταντας τ.ποταμους σου … εἰς ἐρημου χ.ῥομφαιαν χ.ἀπωλειαν ἀπο Μ. χ.Συηνης—Vulg.: … in solitudines, gladio dissipatam a turre Syenes—

Ezekiel 29:12. ... εἰς ἀπωλειαν ἐν μεσω̣ τ. ἐρηωου, … ἀφανισμος ἐσται—

Ezekiel 29:14. Sept.: ... χαι χατοιχιω αὐτους, … ὁθεν ὲληφθησαν—in terra nativitatis suæ—

Ezekiel 29:15. παρα πασας τ. ἀρχας. Οὐ μη … του μη εἰναι αὐτους πλειονας ἐν—

Ezekiel 29:16 ... εἰς ἐλτιδα αʹναμιμνησχουσαν ἁμαρτιαν ἐγ τω̣ αὐτους ἀχολουθησαι ὀτισω τ. χαρδιων αὐτων—docentes iniquitatem. ut fugiant et sequantur eos;—

Ezekiel 29:17. ... μια τ. μηνος τ.πρωτου—

Ezekiel 29:19. ... τ.πληθος αὐτης—

Ezekiel 29:20. Ἀντι τ.λειτουργε;ας αὐτου ἡς ἐδουλευσεν—19 … exercitui illius (20) et operi quo servivit—

Ezekiel 29:21. ... ἀγατελει χερας παντι τ.οἰχω̣—pullulabit cornu.

EXEGETICAL REMARKS

In reference to the anti - Chaldean coalition, Egypt, as the mainstay of the undertaking, justly forms the conclusion of those prophecies toward such as were without. But even apart from this, the significance of Egypt, as well in its antagonistic position to the Chaldean monarchy as in its relation to the people of God, and therewith to the world in general, demanded an adequate treatment at the close.

Ezekiel 29:1–16. Outline of the Prophecy as a whole.

Ezekiel 29:1, 2. As to time (B. C. 588?), this first prophecy upon Egypt goes before Ezekiel 26 (two months, eighteen days, SCHMIEDER). That notwithstanding it is placed later, shows the position of Egypt at the close is to be regarded as an intentional one; comp. also Ezekiel 29:18, 19. Hengst. remarks: “The prophecy, as appears from Ezekiel 24:1, was delivered during the siege of Jerusalem. The occasion is the hope of recovery through Pharaoh.” (SCHMIEDER: six months, except three days, before the taking of the city (Jer. 39:2), one year and two days after the prophet’s mouth had been shut for his people.)

Ezekiel 29:2. שׂים פניך על, elsewhere with אל; for example, at Ezekiel 6:2.—פרעה, the title of all the native kings of Egypt down to the Persian times; according to Josephus and the Coptic, as much as king (comp. פֶּרַע, prince); Jer. 44:30, Hophra. The prophecy, in accordance with its general character, stretches over king and people, or more precisely, the land.

Ezekiel 29:3–6a. This portion has respect to the king of Egypt.—תנים, only here, according to Gesen. a mere corruption for תנין; according to Hengst. intentionally the plur. majestatis from תנין=תן: “since this dragon blows himself up so much, sets himself forth as the ideal of all dragons.” What is meant by it is no great sea-fish or great serpent, but what was so distinctive of Egypt, as also suitable for the description in Ezekiel 29:4, the crocodile; Job 40., 41:25, 26. For a farther symbolical application of the idea, comp. Isa. 27.; Ps. 74:13, 14; Rev. 12. (תנה–תנן—τεινω, to stretch, of the long-stretching body; also of the long-protracted sound, the jackal.)—The consciousness of power on the part of the Pharaohs, their pride of sway, is visibly expressed by רבץ (Ezekiel 19:2), the secure rest, the undisturbed comfortable lair, after the manner of the crocodile, and by the nearer designation: in the midst of his streams. יְאֹר (יאור) GESEN.: an Egyptian word, on the Rosetta inscription, jor—here of the (seven) arms of the Nile (Isa. 7:18), elsewhere of its canals, when those are called נהרות The Nile is “the heart of Egypt”, on account of which divine honours were of old paid to it, in particular by the kings, with devout regard, “as the vivifying father of all that exists” (CHAMPOLLION). As he already says my stream (Ezekiel 28:2), the לי may not merely import that it belongs to him, is his property, but: it belongs to me of right, or so that it cannot be taken from me—therefore lawfully and inalienably. It gives expression to the loud boast on the ground of natural might as from primeval time and for ever; in which lies the heathenish contrast to Jehovah, who alone is unchangeable, eternal, gives and takes according to His will.—עשיתני, either (ואני, nom. absol.), that he had made himself, which, apart from the fact that the Egyptians boasted of being the oldest men (HEROD. 2:2; DIODOR. 1:10, 50; PLATO in Tim.), accords well with the Egyptian deification of the kingdom. So upon the monuments the priests ever are represented as kneeling in the dust before the kings. The Pharaohs—and this is peculiarly Egyptian—were not merely sprung from the gods, but were themselves gods of the land (DUNCKER, Hist. of Antiquity, 1:150). Therefore, as the king of Tyre (Ezekiel 28:2) with his gods’ seat asserts his divinity, so does the king of Egypt with his stream at least his independence of any other origin = what I am, that am I of myself. Or, we may take the suffix as equivalent to לי, for which, however, Ezekiel 29:9 cannot be adduced, and which cannot be understood with Häv. as meaning: “I have secured for myself its blessings,” or, as still more strongly put by Hitzig: “I have made it for me in a right condition,” with its canals, embankments, sluices, etc., as the Dutch also have been named the creators of their land. [Targum Jonathan: meum est regnum, et ego subjugavi illud.] JEROME: He trusts in the peculiar overflowings of the Nile, which belongs to him; the rain of heaven is of no moment for him. Thus also the old expositors of Homer understood the διιπετεος of the “Aigyptos,” i.e. the Nile, of the annual overflowings (Odys. iv. 477). In its application to Pharaoh Hophra (Apries), the notice of Herodotus is characteristic, that he thought neither the power of men nor of gods could destroy his kingdom (2:100:169).

Ezekiel 29:4. The sin referred to is followed by a corresponding punishment, as the threatening is given forth, that from both king and people the ground of their pride and prosperity should be taken away.—The “behold I am against thee” of Ezekiel 29:3 explicates itself.—חְַחִיִּים, Qeri חַחִים, from חָח, ring, such as is put into the nose of beasts, or about the most tender and susceptible parts of the head, for taming them. HENGST.: “a double ring,” in the Dual, like לחיים, so that both halves join together in the mouth (comp. Ezekiel 19:4). Rosenm. understands it of the hooks, by which, according to Herodotus, the crocodiles were taken (Job 41:2).—The fish, of the arms of the Nile signify the living and well-conditioned Egyptians in general, who had felt themselves like fish in the water, but were now to be placed upon dry ground. HITZIG: specially Pharaoh’s men of war; JONATHAN: the princes and nobles.—הדבקתי, Ezekiel 3:26.—For תדבק, supply אְַשֶׁר.—As to what historical signification is to be put upon the image, which is of a quite general kind, no indication whatever is given. But see the Doctrinal Reflections, No. 2.

Ezekiel 29:5. The wilderness forms, as to the sense, the contrast to might and pomp and all sort of abundance; as to the figure, it is a contrast to the Nile, which formed an oasis in the midst of the wilderness, being secured by the heights on the west against the quicksands and storms of the great desert, and separated by the mountains on the east from the rocky cliffs, the desolate plains, and sand downs. The irrigation of the ground in consequence of the abundant waters of the Nile, especially at the season of the yearly overflowing, the cooling of the atmosphere precisely at the time when the heat is greatest, are the more important, since the blue and shining heaven is never troubled by rain-clouds, the heat is strong, and the south-west gales sometimes drive the sand and dust of the Sahara over the Libyan mountains as far as the Nile. (“Egypt is a land without rain, without springs, without refreshing winds, without alternating seasons. Instead of these, however, it possesses a fertile stream, which has not its like upon earth. In the far-reaching expanse one sees only the dead wilderness; but on approaching the Nile, all is life and prosperity. The camel of the desert scents the fresh Nile air at the distance of half a day’s journey. The Arabs call it Bachr, the sea; it is, however, one of the greatest and longest rivers of the earth, to be compared with the Amazon, Mississippi, and Yenisei.”—SEPP.) Hence, for the very reason that it reckons itself distinguished, as forming a green oasis of luxuriant fertility and coolness in the midst of a boundless waste, Jehovah brings it into that wilderness condition. A deeper parallel, however, also lies in this relegation to the wilderness, in respect to the divine guiding of Israel into the wilderness when Israel came out of Egypt.—“Upon the face of the field” means the same as “the wilderness;” according to Hengst.: “the open field as contrasted with the splendid mausoleums in which the Egyptian Pharaohs were buried in the times of their glory.” Not even an honourable burial would be given him (TARGUM). At all events, in the place where he falls, there he remains lying; and, indeed, what previously were separate from each other, thee and every fish, now come to be united in the representative person of the king. “Every one of his deceased subjects was, as it were, a part of Pharaoh, as in the retreat from Moscow Napoleon was seen in every dead Frenchman” (HENGST.). They are simply abandoned to the wilderness; hence there is found no gathering up and carrying away (אסף), no bringing together (קבץ).—Comp. Matt. 13:47 sq.

Ezekiel 29:6a. A knowledge which is the very reverse of what was distinctively Egyptian, according to which the Pharaohs were honoured, on the monuments, as “the dispensers of life,” the “ever-living,” and such like. (Comp. the Rosetta inscription.)

Ezekiel 29:6b–12. This section has respect to the land. The words: all the inhabitants of Egypt, mediate the transition from the king to the land.—The יעןֹ can scarcely be the reason for the fact of the Egyptians knowing God; but this sentence properly breaks off here, and a new sentence begins, to which Ezekiel 29:8 forms the conclusion; so that Ezekiel 29:7 comes in parenthetically (KL.).—The image of the reed-staff is derived from Isa. 36:6, the more suitably as it is there found in the mouth of the Assyrian king, whose heritage passed over to the Chaldeans; and to repeat with the fact the addition of broken, used there by him, was, as a judgment already openly pronounced upon Egypt, so much the more a ground of shame for Israel. What had discovered itself even in the Assyrian time should have needed no fresh proof.

Ezekiel 29:7. It means that a reed-staff is not only no support, but a hurtful support; it carries with it a show and deceit of a dangerous kind. It is not, however, to be forgotten, that there is a characteristic allusion involved in the figure to the prolificness of Egypt in reeds and bulrushes (Isa. 19:6).—Instead of בְכַפְּךָ, the Qeri has בַכַּף, as if the personified Egypt, or this as addressed in its king, could have no hand! In order to hold fast by the image of the reed, which is certainly continued by the רצץ (Isa. 36:6), Kliefoth translates: “by thy twig” but who would lay hold thus of a reed if he means to support himself upon it?—That Israel promised himself support from Egypt is evident from the result of the breaking of this reed-staff; while the wounded, torn shoulder leant upon it, the splinters of the reed ran thereinto.—KLIEF.: “the staff of reed pierced through the hand and arm, up even to the shoulder.” The שׁען expressly says this, at the same time strengthening the “laying hold of” to a resting thereon with the whole body.—והעמדת׳, GESEN.: only the Hiphil, transposed for וְהִמְעַדְתָ (Ps. 69:24 [23]), “and makest shake.” HENGST.: sarcastically, “a pretty staying, which was, in fact, a casting down.” If the root-meaning of עמד is to draw together, it might stand here as = laming: “and drawest together for them the whole loins” (MEIER). “To make to totter,” or shake, certainly says very little, and “to make to stand,” so that they must use their own loins, without any stay, can hardly be the right explanation. KLIEF.: it pierced through their shoulders, and made these, by injuring their muscles, ligaments, and joints, stiff and rigid, so that they could but stand, and move no more. (“So fared it with the kingdom of the ten tribes under Hosea in connection with Egypt, and likewise with the kingdom of Judah under Zedekiah.”—J. D. MICHAELIS.)

Ezekiel 29:8. Solemn conclusion, with feminine suffixes, on account of the reference to the land. The sword indicates war; Ezekiel 14:17.

Ezekiel 29:9. The consequence of this desolation of the land.—יען, as in Ezekiel 29:6.—Comp. at Ezekiel 29:3. Because Pharaoh, regarding himself as all Egypt, in his lordly spirit asserts for himself the right and power of all,—ואני points back to כי אני; עשׁיתי, not so properly the Nile as generally what is to be made (Isa. 10:13), always, however, with reference to the arms of the Nile,—therefore, in Ezekiel 29:10, Jehovah falls upon this pompous “I,” as well as its supports, the streams which it calls its own, and gives the land of Egypt, with which this “I” had identified itself, to a state of most complete desolation. The heaping together of the synonyms, and the double genitive, express a superlative. Here, as at Ezekiel 29:5, the wilderness in contrast to the Nile. [Hitzig points לָחְָרָבוֹת, “for deserts, desolation of the waste.” Schmieder remarks on it, that definite pre-intimations of inevitable chastisements are commonly milder, and draws attention to an unmistakeable softening in what follows (Ezekiel 29:12–16), which might be still more lightened in the execution of the punishment.] From Migdol, a similar bounding to that in Ezekiel 25:13 (Sept.: ἀπὸ Μαγδώλου); placed over against Syene (Aswan), the most southerly boundary, on the cataracts of the Nile, and to be taken as the boundary on the north. It was, as the name imports, a “fortress,” perhaps the border-watch toward Syria; on account of which Jerome: a turre Syenes. סונה, according to Champollion, from ouen, to open, and sa, through which it acquires the sense of “the opener,” the key (of Egypt). Here rise the mighty terraces of reddish granite (Syenite), which formed the building material of the Egyptian kings. The determining expression ועד׳ does not go beyond, but fixes Syene as the boundary on the Ethiopian side.

Ezekiel 29:11 paints the desolation (Ezekiel 29:9, 10), corresponding to Ezekiel 29:8. Neither traffic nor travel.—ולא תשב, HENGST.: “and it shall not sit” (!); therefore it shall lie down. The forty years are (according to him) historical, to be branched off from the seventy of Jeremiah, Ezekiel 25, 29, which began in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, when, with the slaughter at Circesium on the Euphrates, the power of Egypt was for ever broken. Thirty years had it continued, till the war passed over to the proper head of the anti-Chaldean coalition, and Egypt was laid waste. Hitzig takes the number for a found one (1 Sam. 17:16; Ex. 24:18, etc.), after the analogy of Ezekiel 4:6 (but see there). The parallel already indicated at Ezekiel 29:5, as well as the general character of the prophecy, Nebuchadnezzar not being named here, recommend the symbolical import of the number: Israel, when delivered from Egypt, forty years in the wilderness; Egypt, with respect to Israel, forty years a wilderness; there a proving, here a judgment, punishment. [Tholuck is of opinion that the number is indeed a round one, but still of an approximate nature as regards the probable reckoning, about 36 or 37.]—On תשׁב, comp. Ezekiel 26:20. ישׁב signifies: “to be master of something,” to possess, therefore: to tarry somewhere, and so here: to occupy house, be at home. We are not to regard it as a poetical phrase for being inhabited (KLIEF.), but rather to consider it as spoken with reference to the scattering, etc., of the inhabitants in Ezekiel 29:12.

Ezekiel 29:12. As an absolute contrast to Israel in the wilderness, corresponds in a symbolical respect the repeated delineation of the like total desolation of Egypt (Ezekiel 12:20, 14:15). In reality, this can only be understood relatively, as compared with Egypt’s former flourishing condition as a land.—The twice repeated בתוך points to the neighbouring lands, with their cities, or to the provinces of Egypt, or to the members of the coalition against Babylon (HENGST.). Häv. regards it as purely ideal, since otherwise the article must have stood before ארצות. According to HENGST.: “the desolation is not so precise a fact as the supremacy, which was decided by a single battle. It is sufficient if the beginning of the desolation took place within the fourth decennium from its end (?). The end of the forty years, at all events, coincides with that of the seventy years in Jeremiah, of which the first seventeen had elapsed at the time our prophecy was published—seven under Jehoiakim, ten under Zedekiah. Therefore there still were thirteen years to expire before the beginning of the forty years. In Ezekiel 29:17 the prophet has himself expressly determined the beginning of the four decenniums.”—By the scattering of the Egyptians is meant the deportation of the young and the noble, as such was then associated with every hostile occupation, Nah. 3:10 (THOLUCK). Also those scattered through terror are not to be forgotten. HÄV.: “Almost the same expressions here of Egypt, which elsewhere are used only of the dispersion and gathering again of Israel.” “Egypt the caricature of Israel.”

Ezekiel 29:13–16. The end.

Ezekiel 29:13. The כי assigns a reason for the forty years, by pointing to what is to take place thereafter. But that by the end of this period respect is had to the end of the Chaldean supremacy, as in Jeremiah, is not indicated in the text, nor would it have been according to Ezekiel’s style (comp. Introd. to Ezekiel 25 sq.; comp. also Jer. 46:26).—The promised gathering of Egypt, in Ezekiel 29:14, is restitution (comp. at Ezekiel 16:53), indeed, to their original condition, but not to the height which it had then reached.—Pathros is what belongs to the south; South or Upper Egypt, Thebes, which (as Ewald remarks) “was not, according to the Manethonian dynasties, precisely the oldest seat of royalty, yet still a Southern Egypt older than Memphis; but after the time of the Hyksos, all the power of Egypt departed from Thebes.”—Comp. HEROD. 2:4, 15; DIODOR. 1:50.—מכורתם, see at Ezekiel 16:3 (21:35 [30]).—On the expression: a low kingdom, comp. at Ezekiel 17:14. HENGST.: “This is no mere prediction, but an indirect practical advice (Isa. 41:28), to dissuade from a foolish confidence in Egypt.” The parallel, besides, with Israel has already been noticed.

Ezekiel 29:15. Comparison with other kingdoms. Such it had often made, and therein gone to excess. Now God makes the comparison, and certainly with another result.

Ezekiel 29:16. למבטח, compare therewith the repeated לבטח, Ezekiel 28:26.—יהיה, masc., while formerly תהיה, a kingdom being thought of, but here it is conceived of as a people, or as king.—That the Egyptian people (as the אחריהם might indicate) could inspire Israel with confidence, so that the latter should lean upon them, support itself on them, especially as against Babylon—in that respect they were a remembrancer of iniquity (comp. on Ezekiel 21:28 [23]). This is what is plainly expressed by פנה with אחרי, namely, “to turn oneself to any one, in order to follow him”—on which comp. Ezekiel 17:6, 7; Ps. 40:5 [4]. (HENGST.: “Whosoever beguiles into iniquity brings iniquity to remembrance, or to the knowledge of him under whose cognizance it falls. For the iniquity which is committed cannot remain unmarked by ‘the Judge of the whole earth,’ nor unpunished.” HÄV.: “Now Egypt comes forth as an accuser of the covenant-people before God, as a witness in respect to their want of confidence in Him, their idolatrous admiration of worldly, external power, therefore of their falling away from God.” Ewald translates: “Still further the house of Israel had a Satan for their confidence.”) The knowledge of Jehovah as Lord and Ruler, as in judgment, so in compassion, is the perpetual refrain; it is for Israel and for the heathen the end of the ways of God.

Ezekiel 29:17–21. The appended key for understanding the prophecies concerning Egypt.—Not merely the relation to what went before, but the relation also to what follows, calls for consideration. In the former respect, the section is an appendix; in the latter respect, and generally, it is a key for the understanding of the prophecies respecting Egypt. We have to regard it as a sort of parenthesis, since the announcement of time in Ezekiel 29:17 expressly shows it was above 16 years later than Ezekiel 29:1, later even than Ezekiel 40. [SCHMIEDER: exactly 16 years, 2 months, 17 days after the preceding prophecy; not quite 17 years after the destruction of Jerusalem, two years after Ezekiel’s vision of the new temple. HITZIG: the new-moon day of April 572 B. C.] It consequently stands quite apart from the preceding prophecy, but so does it also from the one that follows, Ezekiel 30:1–19, by its closing verse. Ezekiel 30:1–19 stands related to Ezekiel 29:1–16, as Ezekiel 26:7–14 to Ezekiel 26:2–6; so that the indication of time in Ezekiel 29:1 holds good also for Ezekiel 30:1. Hengst. denies the number seven for the prophecies upon Egypt, because the necessary chronological specification is wanting at Ezekiel 30:1. This reason cannot avail against the consideration that the significant number, which rules the whole, in a way that perfectly accords with its symbolical import as well as with the relation of the close (of Egypt), reverts with this close to the whole, and thereby connects the whole together. The chronological specification has been omitted at Ezekiel 30:1, because it would have been the same as that at Ezekiel 29:1; and the verses 17–21 are interjected here precisely on this account, that Ezekiel 30:1–19, being contemporaneous with Ezekiel 29:1–16, might form a separate prediction, and so complete the seven number of prophecies upon Egypt.

Ezekiel 29:18. The thirteen years’ siege of Tyre furnishes the key for the more immediate understanding of the prophecy upon Egypt; the breaking off of the siege in question rendered possible the approaching fulfilment of the anti-Egyptian predictions.—Ezekiel 26:7.—The work against Tyre, consequently the siege of the city, is designated great, and this not without respect to the consequences which it involved for the host of the king of Babylon. Of the bearing upon the head and shoulder, with reference to helmet and burdens, קרח and מרט are used, which presuppose long and heavy toil. According to HENGST. the works had to do with the erecting of besieging towers, and especially the casting up a rampart (Ezekiel 26:8); but they suit decidedly better when viewed with respect to the mound running over to insular Tyre, as indicated by Ewald (Ezekiel 26:10). Hitzig makes the ingenious remark, that the shallowness of the sea-strait in Alexander’s time, mentioned by Arrian, may have been occasioned by the efforts of Nebuchadnezzar to construct this mound. However, it is not in such respect, therefore, as to what concerns the greatness of the work, that ושכר לא׳ is to be understood of a like great reward corresponding to it. שׂכר, according to its root-meaning, is “a something made fast,”—either subjectively, what any one held fast by himself or had made fast with another, or objectively, what for material considerations must be held fast. It is in a general way denied that Nebuchadnezzar and his host had received from Tyre hire or reward for their work. As the siege was the work, the hire must mean the booty, especially with respect to the host. The separate mention of him and his host seems to point to a distinction between Nebuchadnezzar and his host in reference to the hire. Jerome affirms simply, though he does not say on what grounds, that the nobles and rich men of Tyre made away from it in ships, carrying with them their treasures over the sea, and Nebuchadnezzar’s host could find no spoil. Ewald accepts this; and Häv. cites in support of it Isa. 23:6, and what happened at the siege of Tyre under Alexander (DIODOR. xvii. 41; CURT. 4:3). Probable, at all events more probable than the supposition of Hitzig that the money of the Tyrians was spent in the war, must be the consideration that the besiegers of Tyre also had an interest in sparing the city, and refraining from plundering it. Only the prophet does not say this, but makes the Chaldee host come to Egypt to its hurt. With the conquest of the city, however, whether it was or was not effected, our verse has nothing really to do, as Movers justly remarks. Ezekiel 29:19 rather suggests another reference. For Nebuchadnezzar, at least, the consequence of the siege of Tyre, “his hire,” could only be Egypt, if the great work was not to remain without reward. First with the punishment of Egypt did the recompense become complete which must strike the anti-Chaldean coalition. Egypt also would otherwise have remained the spark which was ever ready to inflame a new Phœnicia and Syria. If the overthrow of Tyre was to yield profit to Nebuchadnezzar, not merely must Jerusalem be laid prostrate, but Egypt also, the pillar of all opposition, as against Assyria so against Babylon, be brought down. It is from such points of view in Babylonian policy that we are to understand what is meant by his hire not having been given him. But what naturally mediates the result, what forms the consequence of the evil, this is in truth, spiritually considered, the divine punishment; and hence the therefore, etc., in Ezekiel 29:19. The policy of the divine recompense as against Egypt (the prop of Israel’s unfaithfulness and treachery to the covenant), so for Nebuchadnezzar’s work (“which they did for Me,” Ezekiel 29:20), in the service of Jehovah, is primarily the key of the prophecies touching Egypt.—המון is noise, and from that “a noisy multitude;” here, on account of the connection, and because נשׂא merely is used: the great mass of things, therefore: the riches. [EWALD: “its noisy pomp.”]—As Herodotus and Diodorus report, certainly after the quite untrustworthy tradition of Egyptian vanity, Hophra had besieged the Phœnicians and Cyprians by land and sea, and returned with rich booty to Egypt. There were assuredly no lasting results of such a thing; for after the defeat at Carchemish, and the miscarrying of the relief of Jerusalem, the position of Egypt was not adequate to that; although still, as also Duncker thinks, the Egyptians might have brought home spoil and trophies. There was a glimmering of Egypt’s early splendour in the Circumstance of its being given for a reward to Nebuchadnezzar.—Hitzig takes as the subject to והיתה the land of Egypt (Ezekiel 29:20).

Ezekiel 29:20. פְּעֻלָּה, as in Ps. 109:20, that which is wrought for, the fruit of labour. EWALD: “as his pay.”—בה is perhaps, after the expression in Ezekiel 29:18, אשר עבד עליה, to he understood of the city of Tyre. It is commonly rendered: for which he wrought. Hitzig justly remarks: “that Nebuchadnezzar had besieged Tyre in the service of Jehovah could have been declared by the prophet only then, if the city had been conquered;” but since, according to Hitzig, this could not be, he applies עשו to the Egyptians (!), as was already done in the Targum of Jonathan, and necessarily imposes on אשר the signification: in regard to that which; that is, for that which.

Ezekiel 29:21. This verse vividly represents the character of the whole section. It is a close which corresponds to the subsidiary character of the section, Ezekiel 29:17–20, in relation to the general prophecy upon Egypt, by the generalness of the style in which it is given, as thereby also it accords with the design that this section should serve as a key to the Egyptian prophecies generally. Comp. the analogous Ezekiel 28:25, 26. In the latter respect it is indicated to us in Ezekiel 29:21, that although the immediate fulfilment of that which concerned Egypt should be accomplished through Nebuchadnezzar, yet Egypt opens a farther prospect still, since it is to be regarded, in these prophecies of Ezekiel upon foreign peoples, as heathendom generally in its close coming into regard for Israel’s destruction. From this point of view, the ביום ההוא certainly connects itself with the moment of the fulfilment through Nebuchadnezzar; but it at the same time conducts farther, expands this day to “an ideal day” (HENGST.)—the day of the Lord (Ezekiel 30:3)—to the Messianic time, as Ewald has properly recognised. [SCHMIEDER: “every annihilation of a national power, which bent itself against the Lord, is to the prophet a type of all human power which rises against God—a type of the world’s judgment. Therefore also the promises, which were given Israel for the last time, connect themselves therewith, and now revive again.”] According to Hitzig, the attack upon Egypt was to Ezekiel the pledge of the then also beginning salvation announced in Ezekiel 20:40 sq., 17:22, 16:60.—צמח, used of gradual growth out of small beginnings and constant burstings forth again, new shoots, with reference to the צֶמַח in Jeremiah and Zechariah.—The horn, as very commonly derived from horned beasts, in particular the bull, a biblical expression for strength, and the courage resting thereon; not so properly with reference to pushing (HENGST.), for which the context affords no occasion; as in contrast to the impotence of Egypt (heathendom), the power and pomp of the flesh—therefore another sense of power, the consciousness of the victory which overcomes the world. Ps. 75:5, 132:17; Lam. 2:3; Luke 1:69; comp. also 1 Sam. 2:1 with respect to the following פתחון־פה.—The opening, of the mouth points expressly to Ezekiel 24:26. (See there.) What was said in that place upon the symbolical import of the dumbness of the prophet determines also his speaking here in the midst of Israel as a prophetical one. Only, “the house of Israel” must not be resolved into the community of the Lord, and the mouth of Ezekiel into the word of prophecy, agreeably to Joel 3, as Theodoret already explained the matter; but we have to cleave to the second chief part of the predictions of our prophet, for which the opening of his mouth to Israel is, according to Ezekiel 24:26 sq., the characteristic, in contradistinction to the first main portion of his book. But in so far will such opening of Ezekiel’s mouth have place as his prophecy of the compassions of God shall then have found their confirmation.