Welcome to Bible Fiber, where we are encountering the textures and shades of the biblical tapestry through twelve Minor Prophets, two reformers, and one exile. I am Shelley Neese, president of The Jerusalem Connection, a Christian organization devoted to sharing the story of the people of Israel, both ancient and modern. I am also the author of the Bible Fiber book. Check it out on Amazon if you haven’t already!
We are still in the OAN, the long suspense-building pause between Ezekiel’s announcement of Jerusalem’s fall in Chapter 24 and confirmation of Jerusalem’s fall in Chapter 33.
Ezekiel arranged the seven oracles in a geographical sequence around Israel. He started with Ammon to the east. Next, he addressed Moab and Edom, further southeast. The focus then shifted westward to Philistia, followed by Tyre and Sidon to the northwest. In the last pronouncement, Ezekiel turned his reproach to Egypt in the southwest. The oracle against Egypt is Ezekiel’s longest by far, spanning four chapters.
Babylon’s Rival
At the start of the oracle against Egypt, Ezekiel gave the exact date, the equivalent of 7 January 587 BCE (29:1). It was exactly a year since Nebuchadnezzar first laid siege to Jerusalem.
In the early sixty century BCE, at the time of Ezekiel, Egypt was the only regional power who had a chance of challenging Babylon’s expansion. As Nebuchadnezzar’s army campaigned throughout the region, Egypt tried mightily to hold on to its upper hand. Jerusalem found itself in a precarious position, caught in the middle of two major powers vying for dominance. King Zedekiah, Jehoiakim and Jehoiachin all hoped to preserve Jerusalem’s independence. They switched their allegiance between Babylon and Egypt, unsure of the safest bet.
One of Egypt’s tactical strategies was to help smaller nations in their resistance to Babylonian ambitions. They wanted their allies to be codependent on them for aid. For example, the Pharaoh Hophra of Egypt (588-569 BCE) encouraged Judah to rebel against Babylon, promising Egypt’s military support in their struggle. He said they would intervene on Judah’s behalf and repel Nebuchadnezzar. According to Jeremiah’s account, Egypt’s intervention forced the Babylonians to lift their siege of Jerusalem, giving the city a brief respite and strengthening Judah’s determination to continue fighting (Jer. 37:5-11). However, Hophra relented, and his battalion retreated once they confronted the Babylonian army. Jeremiah’s description is vague, but Egypt might have withdrawn without a battle. This withdrawal of Egyptian forces hastened the fall of Jerusalem.
Both Ezekiel and Jeremiah prophesied that God was going to use Babylon to punish Judah. With that understanding, they wanted to get the punishment over with. That is why they were both irritated with Egypt prodding Jerusalem’s kings to revolt. The prophets blamed Egypt for soliciting Judah’s partnership and blame Judah for placing their trust in Egypt. Judah had to be punished and Hophra was interfering with that process.
The Nile crocodile
God gave Ezekiel a word for the pharaoh. “Mortal,” he commanded, “prophesy against Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and set your face against him and against all Egypt” (29:2). He does not name the pharaoh, but the dating and context points to Pharaoh Hophra. He characterized the pharaoh as “the great dragon sprawling in the midst of its channels” (29:3). The word Ezekiel used was tannim, the same word used for chaos monsters like the Leviathan in ancient Near Eastern mythology (Job 41). By describing the pharaoh as a primordial monster, Ezekiel was mocking the pharaoh’s pretensions to divinity.
The sprawling creature boasted, “My Nile is my own; I made it for myself” (29:3). Putting words in the monster’s mouth, Ezekiel was calling out the pharaoh’s excessive pride and his false sense of security. The creature laid claim to the Nile as if he was not only the Nile’s possessor, but also its creator. The pharaoh’s claim on the Nile aligned him with the Tyrian king who also claimed divinity.
In the next verse, Ezekiel demoted the creature from mythical status to a common crocodile. He warned, “I will put hooks in your jaws and make the fish of your channels stick to your scales. I will draw you up from your channels, with all the fish of your channels sticking to your scales” (29:4). Ezekiel’s shift from mythical dragon to Nile crocodile grounded the prophecy in a familiar, real-world creature significant to Egyptian culture. The imagery shows Ezekiel’s mastery of satire. He was mocking the gap between the pharaoh’s actual power and his self-perception.
Hooking a crocodile’s jaws was indeed the method ancient Egyptians used to catch the crocodiles that populated the Nile River. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote about the Egyptian’s approach to crocodile hunting (History, 2.70). According to Herodotus, the Egyptians tied pork to a hook and rope to lure the crocodiles to shore. Once they caught the crocodile, they blinded the creature and bound its legs. Then they adorned the crocodiles with jewelry and ornaments as part of a ritual, either killing and mummifying them or keeping them alive and feeding them. In the Egyptian pantheon, crocodiles were associated with the god Sobek.
In Ezekiel’s word picture, God played the role of crocodile hunter. He was the one to hook the crocodile and drag him out of his habitat. The fish stuck to the crocodile’s scales may be a reference to Egypt’s allies or its normal citizenry. Either way, their fate depended on the fate of the creature. God said he would throw the crocodile into the desert, where he had no hope of survival at the mercy of scavenger birds (29:5). Ezekiel’s portrayal of the pharaoh’s undignified burial was the ultimate insult to a pharaoh who required elaborate burial rituals.
Reed crutch
In Ezekiel’s second metaphor, he likened Egypt to a reed crutch. Describing the dangers of relying on Egypt as a loyal ally, he lamented, “when they grasped you with the hand, you broke and tore all their shoulders, and when they leaned on you, you broke and made all their legs give way” (29:7).
Reeds thrive in the wetlands and riverbanks of ancient Egypt. A grass-like plant, they are flimsy, easy to break, and cannot sustain weight. His hearers would have known that a thin reed is not suitable for fashioning a crutch. Ezekiel was not the only person in the Bible to associate Egypt’s military reliability with a thin reed. Perhaps, in antiquity, it was a popular caricature of Egypt’s military, and an often-repeated insult about their trustworthiness. For example, in 2 Kings, an Assyrian commander warned King Hezekiah that Egypt’s army was as unreliable as a crutch or staff made from a reed (2 Kings 18:21). The prophet Isaiah also compared Egypt’s army to a splintered reed (Isa. 36:6).
If Egypt had a centuries-old reputation for empty promises, they cemented that belief with their quick retreat in the face of the Babylonian siege. The people of Jerusalem, held their breath, holding out hope that Egypt could push back their Babylonian attackers. The exiles in Babylon, hearing of Zedekiah’s gamble, anticipated the end of exile. They thought only mighty Egypt could save them from their troubles.
Ezekiel described Jerusalem leaning on the reed crutch, falling from its lack of support, and becoming injured. It was futile to rely on them for aid. Judah should have never trusted in any protector other than Yahweh. But because they had placed their trust in Egypt, his punishment of Egypt was that much more severe. God would still hold Egypt accountable for its failure to deliver on its assurances.
Egypt’s punishment
Yahweh expanded his address to the entire land of Egypt. He declared, “I will bring a sword upon you and will cut off from you human and animal and the land of Egypt shall be a desolation and a waste” (29:9). All of Egypt, from the farthest northern point to the farthest southern point, would turn into a wasteland. Nothing living would cross over it because it would be uninhabitable for decades (29:11).
By using their own strengths against them, God brought ruin to both Tyre and Egypt. The Tyrian ship sank from the weight of its own material excess. Egypt took pride in the fertility of the Nile. The Nile was the source of its life, wealth, and power. When other countries suffered from drought, Egypt had always survived. During the time of their punishment, that would change.
God would not be angry with Egypt forever. The Egyptians would return to their land after only 40 years of exile, the timespan that represented one generation (29:12). After the 40-year exile, God was going to regather Egyptians in the “land of their origin” and “restore their fortunes” (29:14). They would not return to their former glory, the nation at the top of the region’s proverbial pyramid, but they would continue to exist as a people in their land.
Egypt’s punishment paralleled Judah’s punishment. The light sentence is at first surprising, except Ezekiel said after the return they would be a “lowly kingdom” (29:14). While Egypt may have experienced a similar period of exile, their return won’t be a glorious restoration. They would never again be strong enough to impose their rule over the neighboring states (29:15). In fact, Egypt would be a vassal state to a rotation of conquering empires: Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. As a result, Jerusalem would stop being codependent on Egypt for protection. Ezekiel said, “the Egyptians shall never again be the reliance of the house of Israel; they will recall their iniquity when they turned to them for aid” (29:16).
After describing Tyre’s burial at the bottom of Sheol and Ammon and Moab being wiped from history, it is shocking that Ezekiel offered Egypt its own restoration promise. Daniel Block, author of the NICOT commentary on Ezekiel, theorizes that Egypt’s denouncement was less severe than the other nations because at least it showed compassion for Judah during the siege.[1] Tyre greedily took advantage of Judah’s fall, and the other nations gloated over Jerusalem’s demise. Egypt may have faltered on its oath to Israel, but it did not exploit its misfortune. Egypt tried to help Judah, even if its motives were selfish.
Prophecy gone wrong
The book of Ezekiel concludes with an unexpected twist in Chapter 29. A prophecy dated 571 BCE, seventeen years after the earlier oracle against pharaoh, stands way out of the chronological sequence. This late addition, likely placed there by an editor for thematic consistency, is the entire book’s final recorded prophecy.
Nearly two decades had passed since Ezekiel first uttered his prophecy against Tyre. Nebuchadnezzar’s troops had besieged the island fortress for thirteen grueling years before abandoning their efforts. God vividly described the toll on the soldiers: “every head was made bald, and every shoulder was rubbed bare” (29:18). Whether from natural aging or the brutal conditions of prolonged siege warfare, the Babylonian army had suffered. The precise details of the Tyrian-Babylonian ceasefire remain unclear. Perhaps Tyre agreed to pay tribute, sparing itself from the customary looting. To Ezekiel’s fellow exiles, however, his prophecy of Tyre’s destruction went unfulfilled.
The terms of lifting the siege must have spared Tyre from the usual looting. God’s concern for the Babylonian soldiers’ compensation may seem unusual. However, in the ancient Near Eastern mindset, plunder was a gift bestowed to invading armies by the gods. As Babylon had acted as Yahweh’s instrument of judgment, God took responsibility for their reimbursement (29:20). God declared, “I will give the land of Egypt to King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon, and he shall carry off its wealth and despoil it and plunder it, and it shall be the wages for his army” (29:19). The spoils from Egypt would serve as payment for the fruitless Tyrian campaign. Although God did not need to defend his delay or add to his previous message, he tweaked his prophecy for Ezekiel’s sake.
Ezekiel’s audience may have grumbled about the prophecy’s lack of fulfillment and questioned his authenticity as a prophet. Or Ezekiel was the one struggling with God’s delay. Ezekiel had predicted that the Babylonians specifically would cut Tyre down to nothing. Yet Tyre still stood. Unknown to Ezekiel, his prophecy would find fulfillment 250 years later through Alexander the Great’s conquest. The Greeks succeeded where the Assyrians and Babylonians failed. When the Babylonian army gave up without capturing Tyre, Ezekiel must have wondered if he had been mistaken. Nowhere else in prophetic literature does a prophet confess that one of his prophecies was wrong.
God was sympathetic to Ezekiel’s embarrassment. He did not allow his prophet to doubt his calling for long. He promised he would “cause a horn to sprout up for the house of Israel” (29:21). Despite the odd placement of the messianic promise, God’s intention was to reassure the prophet that he would restore the power of Israel. He added, “I will open your lips among them” (29:21). If Ezekiel did not stop speaking for God, God would vindicate his reputation and prophetic abilities.
This passage reveals a striking parallel between Ezekiel’s ancient audience and modern readers. Too often, contemporary prophecy enthusiasts focus on the prophets’ predictions rather than their message. They over-analyze the prophets’ obscure elements to reveal secrets about the end times but ignore their very clear moral and ethical demands. In their zeal to uncover hidden meanings, they miss the forest for the trees. The core of Ezekiel’s message—calls for covenant obedience, justice, and righteous living—often gets overshadowed by speculative interpretations. We are guilty of narrowly interpreting Ezekiel in modern times, but apparently, his peers did the same thing. They got lost in the details of literal fulfillment instead of embracing the prophetic call to return to God.
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Shabbat Shalom and Am Israel Chai
[1] Daniel Block, NICOT, page 195