Ezekiel 29:8 - Meaning and Application

This explains the earlier prediction, which was given in a symbolic way, and it looks beyond that to something more. Here is a prophecy.

I. About the ruin of Egypt. The warning here is very full and specific, and the sin that brings this ruin is pride (Ezekiel 29:9). They said, “The river is mine, and I made it,” so their land will spit them out. God is against them, against both the king and the people, against them and their rivers. Waters often stand for peoples and crowds (Revelation 17:15).

Many of them will be cut down by the sword of war, a sword God will bring to destroy both people and animals, the sword of civil war. The land will be emptied out. The land of Egypt will be desolate and waste (Ezekiel 29:9), with no farming and no inhabited cities. The wealth of the country and its cities fed their pride, and God will take that away. It will be completely waste, and desolate (Ezekiel 29:10). No people or animals will pass through it, and no one will live there (Ezekiel 29:11). It will be desolate in the middle of the lands that are desolate, too (Ezekiel 29:12).

This came about not so much because of the wars they had already made, but because of the war King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon made against them. It will be desolate from one end of the land to the other, from the tower of Syene to the border of Ethiopia. The sin of pride is enough to ruin a whole nation. The people will also be scattered among the nations (Ezekiel 29:12), so those who thought the balance of power was in their hands will become a despised people. Pride always leads to a hard fall.

II. About Egypt’s restoration after a time (Ezekiel 29:13). Egypt will lie desolate for forty years (Ezekiel 29:12), and then God will bring back Egypt’s captives, or exiles, to their land (Ezekiel 29:14). Some count the forty years from Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Egypt, others from an earlier time of desolation. In either case, they end around the first year of Cyrus, when Judah’s seventy years of captivity ended, or soon after.

Then this prophecy will be fulfilled in two ways. First, God will gather the Egyptians from all the countries where they were scattered, bring them back to their own land, and settle them there again (Ezekiel 29:14). Even while God knows how to humble the proud, he does not keep fighting forever, not even with them in this world. Second, they will not rise again to their former greatness. Egypt will be a kingdom again, but it will be the lowest of the kingdoms (Ezekiel 29:15). It will have little wealth and power, and it will not conquer like it once did. It will be the tail of the nations, not the head.

It is a mercy that Egypt will become a kingdom again, but to humble it, it will be a despised kingdom. It will be a long time before it regains anything like its former glory. This will happen for two reasons. First, it must not rule over its neighbors, exalt itself above the nations, or dominate them as it once did. It must learn what it is to be low and looked down on. Those who misuse power deserve to lose it, and God, as King over the nations, will defend the rights and freedoms not only of his own people, but of other nations too.

Second, it must not again become a trap for God’s people (Ezekiel 29:16). It will no longer be the confidence of the house of Israel. They will no longer be tempted to trust in Egypt as they have done before, which is a sin that brings their guilt to mind. That is, it stirs God to punish them, not only for that sin, but for all their other sins too. Or it reminds them of their old idolatries, because when they look to idolaters, they are tempted to lean on them. The things we trust in are often ruined, because there is no other effective way to cure us of trusting them too much. Rather than let Israel fall into that snare again, God says the whole land of Egypt will be laid waste. He once gave Egypt for Israel’s ransom (Isaiah 43:3), and now he will give Egypt for Israel’s correction. Egypt will be destroyed rather than Israel fail to be reformed in this matter. In justice, wisdom, and kindness to us, God breaks the supports we lean on too much and makes them useless, so they will no longer be our confidence.