Ezekiel 29King James Version
A burden on Egypt. Pharaoh is a great dragon lying in the midst of his rivers. I will put hooks in thy jaws. I will forgive Egypt eventually and restore her as a base kingdom, the basest of the kingdoms.
Oracle against Pharaoh and Egypt: Pharaoh is a great dragon in the Nile, lying in his river declaring it is his. God will drag him out with hooks, throw him into the wilderness. Egypt will be a desolate wasteland for forty years, then the lowest of kingdoms. The oracle adds a note: Nebuchadnezzar got no wages from his Tyre campaign, so God gives him Egypt as payment.
The nation that was Israel's original oppressor and chronic unreliable ally faces desolation: Egypt's Nile power is nothing compared to the God who owns the river.
3: "Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself." Claiming to have created what you only inhabit is the exact shape of the delusion.
Around 587 BC. Egypt under Pharaoh Hophra had attempted to relieve Jerusalem during the Babylonian siege but withdrew without success. Zedekiah had counted on Egyptian intervention; it did not come. Ezekiel is writing the post-mortem on that miscalculation.
Pharaoh as the great dragon in the Nile; Egypt as the unreliable staff that breaks and punctures the hand that leans on it; Nebuchadnezzar given Egypt as wages; the LORD who directs the whole sequence.
Egypt appears in Ezekiel both as Israel's original place of bondage and as the chronic temptation to seek military help from a nation that always lets Israel down. The broken-staff image in verse 6 is especially precise: Israel leaned on Egypt for support and Egypt punctured rather than supported them. The forty-year desolation followed by reduction to lowest-of-kingdoms is a permanent diminishment.
For when you have leaned on something that seemed powerful and found it break in your hand. The chapter is blunt about that pattern. Egypt looked like a superpower. It was a reed, hollow under pressure.
1In the tenth year, in the tenth month, in the twelfth day of the month, the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
2Son of man, set thy face against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and prophesy against him, and against all Egypt:
3Speak, and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself.
4But I will put hooks in thy jaws, and I will cause the fish of thy rivers to stick unto thy scales, and I will bring thee up out of the midst of thy rivers, and all the fish of thy rivers shall stick unto thy scales.
5And I will leave thee thrown into the wilderness, thee and all the fish of thy rivers: thou shalt fall upon the open fields; thou shalt not be brought together, nor gathered: I have given thee for meat to the beasts of the field and to the fowls of the heaven.
6And all the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am the LORD, because they have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel.
7When they took hold of thee by thy hand, thou didst break, and rend all their shoulder: and when they leaned upon thee, thou brakest, and madest all their loins to be at a stand.
8Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will bring a sword upon thee, and cut off man and beast out of thee.
9And the land of Egypt shall be desolate and waste; and they shall know that I am the LORD: because he hath said, The river is mine, and I have made it.
10Behold, therefore I am against thee, and against thy rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the tower of Syene even unto the border of Ethiopia.
11No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited forty years.
12And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years: and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries.
13Yet thus saith the Lord GOD; At the end of forty years will I gather the Egyptians from the people whither they were scattered:
14And I will bring again the captivity of Egypt, and will cause them to return into the land of Pathros, into the land of their habitation; and they shall be there a base kingdom.
15It shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations: for I will diminish them, that they shall no more rule over the nations.
16And it shall be no more the confidence of the house of Israel, which bringeth their iniquity to remembrance, when they shall look after them: but they shall know that I am the Lord GOD.
17And it came to pass in the seven and twentieth year, in the first month, in the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,
18Son of man, Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon caused his army to serve a great service against Tyrus: every head was made bald, and every shoulder was peeled: yet had he no wages, nor his army, for Tyrus, for the service that he had served against it:
19Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will give the land of Egypt unto Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon; and he shall take her multitude, and take her spoil, and take her prey; and it shall be the wages for his army.
20I have given him the land of Egypt for his labour wherewith he served against it, because they wrought for me, saith the Lord GOD.
21In that day will I cause the horn of the house of Israel to bud forth, and I will give thee the opening of the mouth in the midst of them; and they shall know that I am the LORD.