Chapter 32
2024 - And still ANOTHER chapter about Egypt. I am getting a very strong suspicion that Egypt as a power is woefully underestimated. Or at least the potential for what Egypt may become as we near the end is underestimated.
2026 - Ezekiel really seems to have pounded home this fall of Egypt. Several chapters of it. Remember that the theme of sin being attributed only to the one who did the sin and not to that persons ancestors or heirs went on for three chapters also. I wonder if those chapter markers even need to be there. Ezekiel seems to really beat a theme to death.
ESV titles this chapter "A Lament over Pharaoh and Egypt"
Time stamped year 12, month 12, day 1. Again the format is poetry/verse.
The previous metaphor of Egypt as a fish pulled from the water and thrown onto dry ground for the birds and beasts to feed upon is used again here. But then, there are these two verses:
7 When I blot you out, I will cover the heavens and make their stars dark; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give its light. 8 All the bright lights of heaven will I make dark over you, and put darkness on your land, declares the Lord GOD. [Eze 32:7-8 ESV]
When things happen in the heavens, it is God at work. Satan has no power to effect signs in the heavens. Only God does. Then as now. These signs in the heavens indicate to me that we are talking at the least about a near/far here, but certainly about the far. Or...MSB says this may have been about Pharaoh's death, and how all who "worshiped" him, saw him as the light, are plunged into darkness at his death. My way of thinking has to mean that Egypt will be put down once and for all in the latter days, during end time events. Babylon falls, but this says to me that Egypt does too in those days. One and the same? Egypt falls under the rule of the antichrist?
http://www.displaceddynasties.com/uploads/6/2/6/5/6265423/displaced_dynasties_chapter__1_-_nebuchadnezzars_wars.pdf
Found this "book" that says the accepted history of Egypt is wrong, and this guy, who didn't even give his name, has it all right. Who knows.
http://www.sanityquestpublishing.com/essays/BabEgypt.html
This one says that anyone who insists that the Bible timeline is correct despite the overwhelming evidence that it is wrong isn't even worth talking to. I sense some close-minded animosity towards those who disagree with him - which is sort of what he accuses his detractors of doing. At any rate, I would say we have a pretty big fork in the road between the archeologically based history of Egypt and the Biblical prophecy of the time. That is not entirely unusual or unexpected.
2024 - So in vss 1-8 I think we are looking at what happens at the Day of the LORD. I think so because of the signs in the heavens in vss 7-8. This has not happened yet, so the fact that some obscure historian says the Bible has it all wrong is of no concern. The similar prophecy back in Chapter 29.3-5 did not give us a "timestamp" as to when the events might occur. Even so, the same metaphors used there are used here, and this on is identifiable as Day of the Lord. So the one in 29 is also. Vs 11 returns to the immediate prophecy concerning the Babylonian conquest of Egypt. I get very uncomfortable when the prophecies jump around like this. However, I think this "double prophecy" about Egypt is pretty unique...at least I do until I go back through all this next year looking for doubles about other nations. So...Remember the discomfort, because it could be telling me this is the wrong way to interpret it, and remember that this seems unique to Egypt - and could be explained by the role Egypt played in Israel's history - and so doesn't have to comply with the hermeneutics.
Vs 9 goes back to standard format. It says many nations will tremble when Egypt falls, and then vs 10 says very specifically that Babylon will be the agent of Egypt's fall. This most definitely happened back then, and maybe this means that in the end times, before Babylon's own fall in the latter days, she will once again take down Egypt. If the fall of Judah is indeed a preview of the latter days and the fall of the whole earth, then it may well be possible that the prophetic visions of each of these nations has a partial fulfillment near term - in Ezekiel's time - but ultimate fulfillment in the latter days. So Egypt uninhabited 40 years? Well nearly uninhabited back then, but in the latter days, possibly scorched by nukes, and truly uninhabitable? Things like this.
2026 - This verse:
11 "For thus says the Lord GOD: The sword of the king of Babylon shall come upon you. [Eze 32:11 ESV]. It is a stretch to think Ezekiel is not talking about prophecy that would be fulfilled in his own day. A sign for his hearers and not for future generations. The only way to "get around" this would be to say it is talking about future Babylon, Revelation Babylon, and that Egypt will be taken out by the future King, the future Neb, during those last dark days. And if you go here, you have to tie it all the way back to 30:3 and make much of this part of vs 3, which according to JM is always about the end times:
3 For the day is near, the day of the LORD is near; it will be a day of clouds, a time of doom for the nations. [Eze 30:3 ESV].
KJV and NKJV have it a little differently:
3 For the day [is] near, even the day of the LORD [is] near, a cloudy day; it shall be the time of the heathen. [Eze 30:3 KJV].
3 For the day [is] near, Even the day of the LORD [is] near; It will be a day of clouds, the time of the Gentiles. [Eze 30:3 NKJV].
Both NASB's, RSV, and even NIV all go with "time of doom". They have all decided KJV had it wrong. And then you have that note form JM saying that the day of doom is always end times. Must have been a pretty compelling doctoral thesis that someone did to persuade pretty much everyone that the translation was wrong. But keep KJV in mind...
We go into poetry format again. And the poetry ends this way:
15 When I make the land of Egypt desolate, and when the land is desolate of all that fills it, when I strike down all who dwell in it, then they will know that I am the LORD. [Eze 32:15 ESV]
A completely empty Egypt as proof that He is the Lord. Surely Babylon did not completely empty Egypt of man and beast. This must still be future in some sense. This is end times.
vs 17 is another time stamp - 12th year, month 12, day 15. Two weeks after the beginning of the chapter. We get one verse in the poetry format:
19 'Whom do you surpass in beauty? Go down and be laid to rest with the uncircumcised.' [Eze 32:19 ESV] Egypt is sent to the underworld. Once in Sheol, in the grave that is, those already there will taunt Egypt, and deride her greatness and pride. She, like all them, is taken down to Sheol. Says that in the grave, there is still remembrance of life. There is a continuation after death. MSB also says this. Several more nations are named, repetitiously, saying that they spread terror and fear while alive, but now in the grave, they lie with the uncircumcised (the un-chosen), and those slain by the sword, who bear their shame (rejection of the living God), together with all those others like them, who all are in the pit. All these great and terrible nations that marched with pride about all the earth...they are all dead, all ashamed because they missed the whole point of the life they were given, who saw earth as the important thing, now lie forever still and useless in that pit.
2024 - Neb ended the "world power" of the Pharaohs once and for all. They never came again. The builders of pyramids, and the Sphinx never came anywhere near that level again, not after Neb. Egypt was never again a player - not against Babylon, nor the Medo-Persians, nor Alexander, nor Rome. Never really a threat to be independent again, always a conquered nation.
2020- vss 22-32 are a recounting of the transience of man, and of the nations he builds. None last. No one has the wisdom. The bigger they get the less they look to God, and so bring about their own destruction. Israel was supposed to be different. But it wasn't, because of the idolatry that they so regularly indulged - like an addiction. All the uncircumcised nations went down to Sheol, and Israel now marks time until the Gentile Age is finished.
2022 - There seems to be a hierarchy in "the pit". This pit is mentioned a number of times right through here - 30-32 certainly - and in each case those who are in the pit recognize the newcomers to the pit, they rank them, they mock them for thinking they were so powerful, and yet here they are, in the same pit with those they disdained as weak or foolish. Is this a real place, or is it some sort of comparative prophetic message that earthly kingdoms - especially evil ones - are all destined for the same fate? Defeat, dishonor, and death.
2020 - All these nations/cities/kings seem to have reached the absolute heights of civilization under the auspices of man. Assyria, Tyre, Babylon, and Egypt were truly unique in the history of the earth, and it great measure it was because of the learning, the abilities, the insight, and so on of the their leaders. The Pharaohs were great men. Nebuchadnezzar was a great man. As in the days of Noah man had reached a "height" in evil and corruption, these nations had reached a height in international trade or military might, or in Egypt's case, self-sufficiency in tune with the cycles of nature. And this height too came crashing down because of the arrogance associated with it. The ease associated with it. There was no "need for God" in such places, and man looked only to himself. But then they turned against each other. Their own greed for greatness consumed them and they destroyed each other, and then the last was destroyed by God. That may well be the sequence of events that will repeat at the end of time. Nations will rise again, and Antichrist - a king like none before him - will unite the whole world under one banner, accomplishing what these great leaders in Ezekiel's time all failed to do - and then in his arrogance, he will go down before Christ, defeated in battle, out strategized, stopped at every inroad. Adam to the fall, the fall to the flood, the flood to Israel's divorce, divorce to end times - Age of the Gentiles. Then the end times. Four. The number of man.
2024 - In summary, these chapters may also be about the futility of war and conquest as the means of building and perpetuating nations. None of these stand. Hell is full of those who chose this strategy, and of those who followed them. They all achieved the same end. They "...have gone down in shame with the slain, for all the terror that they caused by their might; they lie uncircumcised with those who are slain by the sword, and bear their shame with those who go down to the pit". They left God out of their ambitions, and without Him, there is only hell, and the lost, and the uncircumcised.
2026 - We get that repetition again in 20-31. For each nation or region described, the words are repeated: "all her company", "graves round about", "all slain by the sword", "the pit". Over and over and over...
Lie with the uncircumcised, those who go down to the pit.