Ezekielchapter 29
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Key verse
In the tenth year, in the tenth month, in the twelfth day of the month, the word of the Lord came unto me, saying,
It stands in scene A of the chapter, verses 1 to 7.
The chapter
Chapter summary
Egypt's turn, in seven oracles beginning here. Pharaoh is 'the great monster that lieth in the midst of his rivers, that hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself': the Nile claimed as self-made, the essence of the sin. Hooks go into his jaws and he is flung into the wilderness with the fish of his rivers. Egypt was a staff of reed to Israel: leaned on, it broke and tore the shoulder. So the land lies desolate forty years and its people are scattered, then gathered again to be 'the basest of the kingdoms,' never again lifting itself above the nations. Last, Egypt is given to Nebuchadnezzar as wages for his labor against Tyre.
Context
Prophecy · Ezekiel · Ezekiel overview
Where the chapter sits
Ezekiel 29 falls in Oracles against the nations (chapters 25–32). Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia (25); Tyre (26–28); Sidon (28); Egypt (29–32). The King of Tyre lament (28:11–19) surfaces interpretive debate on Satan's fall.
Before it: Symbolic acts and judgment on Jerusalem, chapters 4–24. After it: Restoration promised, chapters 33–37.
The whole shape of Ezekiel→The world behind this chapter
Ezekiel 29The history
Egypt was the Nile and nothing else. Rain was negligible; the annual flood laid down silt and filled the irrigation basins, and the height of the rise was measured on stone gauges because it determined whether the country ate. So when Ezekiel has Pharaoh say my Nile is my own, I made it, he is quoting the exact form of Egyptian royal pride, the king as the guarantor of the flood.
The rest of the history, and what it meant to them
The creature Pharaoh is called is the great monster of the river branches, the Nile crocodile. Egyptian religion honoured a crocodile god, and the animal was the river's own emblem of untouchable power. God says He will put hooks in its jaws and drag it up onto dry land with the fish of its river stuck to its scales, a crocodile hauled out of water is simply a large animal dying in the sun.
The political charge is a walking-stick made of reed. Nile reed looks like a staff and shatters when weight is put on it, and the splinters go into your hand and armpit. Egypt had promised Zedekiah help; an Egyptian army under Hophra did march out in 588 BC and the Babylonians briefly broke off the siege, and then the Egyptians withdrew and the siege closed again. That is the reed splintering, and Jeremiah describes the same episode from inside the city.
The forty-year desolation and scattering that follows was fulfilled in the long humiliation of Egypt rather than in an empty land. Hophra was overthrown by Amasis around 570 BC, a fragmentary Babylonian tablet records Nebuchadnezzar campaigning against Egypt around 568 BC, and after that Egypt was never again a first-rank power, ruled in turn by Persians, Greeks and Romans, a lowly kingdom as the text says.
The appendix at the end is dated sixteen years later and is remarkably honest. Nebuchadnezzar's army worked hard against Tyre, every head rubbed bare and every shoulder worn raw by carrying siege materials, and got no wages from it. So God gives him Egypt instead, as pay for the service his army rendered.
What it meant to them
The exiles were praying for Egypt to win. This oracle, delivered while the siege was still running, tells them the rescuer is a reed.
The appendix does something else for them. It shows a prophet still speaking sixteen years on, willing to record that the great siege of Tyre had not produced what people expected, and still confident about what God would do next. That kind of candour is what made the rest of the book credible.
Sources cited
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
- Herodotus, The Histories , on Apries and Amasis
- K. A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament
A. Pharaoh, the great monster who claimed the river
1. (vv. 1-2)
a.In the tenth year, in the tenth month, in the twelfth day of the month: The date is exact, the tenth year, tenth month, twelfth day, which the commentators reckon to January of 587 BC, months before Jerusalem finally fell, and Ezekiel's oracles against the nations are consistently anchored this way to real days rather than left as vague poetry. Egypt draws the Lord's face against her because Zedekiah had leaned on Pharaoh's army for help against the Babylonian siege, the same alliance Jeremiah condemns in Jerusalem at the very same hour. The word against Egypt and the word against Judah's own false confidence run on parallel tracks in these years, two prophets in two places naming the same broken reed.
Ezekiel 29:1, 2 voicesWhat preachers and commentators have said about this verse, in their own words.
Ezekiel 29:1
“In the tenth year, in the tenth month, in the twelfth day of the month,.... In the tenth year Jeconiah's captivity, and Zedekiah's reign. The Septuagint version has it, the twelfth year; and the Arabic version, the twelfth month; and the Septuagint version again, the first day of the month; and the Vulgate Latin, the eleventh day of it. This month was the month Tebet, and answers to part of December, and part of January.”
Ezekiel 29:1
“The tenth year - Jerusalem had been besieged, but not taken. Jeremiah delivered his prophecy against Egypt, about the time when the approach of Pharaoh Hophra’s army caused the Chaldaeans for the time to raise the siege Jer 37:5. This was the solitary instance of Egypt meddling with the affairs of Palestine or Syria after the battle of Carchemish (compare 2Ki 24:7); it met with speedy punishment.”
Ezekiel 29:2, 3 voices
Ezekiel 29:2
“Son of man, set thy face against Pharaoh king of Egypt,.... Pharaoh was a name common to all the kings of Egypt; the name of this king was Pharaohhophra, Jer 44:30, and who, by Herodotus (x), is called Apries: and prophesy against him, and against all Egypt; prophesy of his destruction, and of the destruction of the whole land that is under his dominion. (x) Euterpe, sive l. 2. c. 161.”
Ezekiel 29:2
“Pharaoh--a common name of all the kings of Egypt, meaning "the sun"; or, as others say, a "crocodile," which was worshipped in parts of Egypt (compare Eze 29:3). Hophra or Apries was on the throne at this time.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Ezekiel 29:2
“But this begins with the prince, because it began to have its accomplishment in the insurrections and rebellions of the people against the prince, not long after this. Pharaoh Hophrah (for so was the reigning Pharaoh surnamed) is here represented by a great dragon, or crocodile, that lies in the midst of his rivers, as Leviathan in the waters, to play therein,”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2. (vv. 3-5)
a.the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers: Pharaoh is named the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, the same word Genesis uses of the sea creatures and Isaiah uses of the primeval chaos monster, so the image reaches for something older and larger than an ordinary crocodile even where a crocodile is the literal picture. My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself states the sin as Pharaoh's own words, self-sufficiency claimed over the Nile the way the prince of Tyre claimed the sea. The hooks in the jaws and the fish stuck to the scales picture an Egyptian crocodile hunt turned back on the hunter, dragged out to die unburied in the open field.
Ezekiel 29:3, 2 voices
Ezekiel 29:3
“The king is addressed as the embodiment of the state. Dragon - Here the crocodile, the great monster of the Nile, which was regarded very differently in different parts of Egypt. By some it was worshipped and embalmed after death, and cities were named after it (e. g., in the Arsinoite nome). Others viewed it with the utmost abhorrence.”
Ezekiel 29:3
“That lieth - Not only at rest, but waiting for prey. My river - My kingdom, power, riches, and forces, all the strength and glory of Egypt. Put hooks - The Allegory is continued.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Ezekiel 29:4, 2 voices
Ezekiel 29:4
“I will put hooks in thy jaws - Amasis, one of this king’s generals, being proclaimed king by an insurrection of the people, dethroned Apries, and seized upon the kingdom; and Apries was obliged to flee to Upper Egypt for safety. I will cause the fish - to stick unto thy scales - Most fish are sorely troubled with a species of insect which bury their heads in their flesh, under their scales, and suck out the vital juices. The allusion seems to be to this.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Ezekiel 29:4
“He raised the siege of Jerusalem, but it was only for a time (compare Eze 29:6; Jer 37:5, 7-10); ruin overtook not only them, but himself. As the fish that clung to the horny scales of the crocodile, the lord of the Nile, when he was caught, shared his fate, so the adherents of Pharaoh, lord of Egypt, when he was overthrown by Amasis, should share his fate.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Ezekiel 29:5, 3 voices
Ezekiel 29:5
“And I will leave thee thrown into the wilderness, thee, and all the fish of thy rivers,.... Where fish in common cannot live, but die as soon almost as out of the water, and on dry land, excepting those that are of the amphibious kind. This wilderness designs the deserts of Lybia and Cyrene, where the battle was fought between Hophra and Amasis; and where the Egyptian army perished, only their king, before compared to a crocodile, which lives on land, as well as in water, escaped.”
Ezekiel 29:5
“I will leave thee thrown into the wilderness - Referring to his being obliged to take refuge in Upper Egypt. But he was afterwards taken prisoner, and strangled by Amasis. Herod. lib. 2 s. 169.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Ezekiel 29:5
“Pharaoh led an army against Cyrene in Africa, in support of Aricranes, who had been stripped of his kingdom by the Cyrenians. The army perished and Egypt rebelled against him [JUNIUS]. But the reference is mainly to the defeat by Nebuchadnezzar. beasts . . . fowls--hostile and savage men.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
3. (vv. 6-7)
a.a staff of reed to the house of Israel: The charge against Egypt is stated in one line, they have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel, an image Isaiah had already used of Egypt's alliances, a support that not only fails but wounds the hand that leans on it. Verse 7 makes the wound literal, thou didst break, and rend all their shoulder, and madest all their loins to be at a stand, the ally's collapse crippling the very nation it promised to hold up. Henry reads the reed as a deliberate contrast with the rock Israel was meant to lean on instead.
Ezekiel 29:6, 2 voices
Ezekiel 29:6
“And all the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am the Lord,.... Who could eject their king from his kingdom, and deliver him into the hands of his enemy; though he thought no God could, as he boastingly said, before observed: because they have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel; alluding to the country of Egypt, which abounded with reeds that grew upon the banks of the river Nile, and other rivers.”
Ezekiel 29:6
“They have been a staff of reed - An inefficient and faithless ally. The Israelites expected assistance from them when Nebuchadnezzar came against Jerusalem; and they made a feint to help them, but retired when Nebuchadnezzar went against them. Thus were the Jews deceived and ultimately ruined, see Eze 29:7.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Ezekiel 29:7, 2 voices
Ezekiel 29:7
So Egypt was continually proving to Israel, to Jehoiakim and to Zedekiah. The tenses are present not past. To be at a stand - Others, “to totter.”
Ezekiel 29:7
“MAURER somewhat similarly (referring to a kindred Arabic form), "Thou hast stricken both their loins." FAIRBAIRN, not so well, "Thou lettest all their loins stand," that is, by themselves, bereft of the support which they looked for from thee.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
B. Egypt made the lowliest of kingdoms for forty years
1. (vv. 8-9)
a.I will bring a sword upon thee: The sentence turns from figure to plain statement, a sword upon thee, man and beast cut off, and the reason given twice over, because he hath said, The river is mine, and I have made it. The recognition formula lands here as it does across the book, they shall know that I am the Lord, the same purpose clause the earlier oracles against Tyre and Zidon carried. Judgment answers a claim to self-made sovereignty with a plain demonstration of who actually made the river.
Ezekiel 29:9, 1 voice
Ezekiel 29:9
“And the land of Egypt shall be desolate and waste,.... Men few or none being left in it, to till it, nor cattle found upon it: and they shall know that I am the Lord; by these judgments executed upon them, now foretold; and which when come to pass, they will be obliged to acknowledge the omniscience and omnipotence of Jehovah: because thou hast said, the river is mine, and I have made it; See Gill on Eze 29:3; this insolent expression was highly resented by the Lord, as appears by the repetition of it.”
2. (vv. 10-12)
a.from the tower of Syene even unto the border of Ethiopia: The desolation is given a real geography, from the tower of Syene, at Egypt's southern frontier, to the border of Ethiopia, the full length of settled Egypt rather than a symbolic corner. Forty years uninhabited by man or beast, and the Egyptians scattered among the nations, is a specific and bounded sentence rather than a promise of final destruction, since the same oracle already looks past it. Barnes notes the forty years as deliberately recalling Israel's own forty years, judgment measured out on the pattern the Lord had already used once before.
Ezekiel 29:10, 1 voice
Ezekiel 29:10
“From the tower of Syene - ממגדל מונה mimmigdol seveneh, “from Migdol to Syene.” Syene, now called Essuan, was the last city in Egypt, going towards Ethiopia. It was famous for a well into which the rays of the sun fell perpendicularly at midday.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Ezekiel 29:12, 2 voices
Ezekiel 29:12
“Shall be desolate forty years - The country from Migdol or Magdolan, which was on the isthmus between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, was so completely ruined, that it might well be called desert; and it is probable that this desolation continued during the whole of the reign of Amasis, which was just forty years. See Herod. lib. 3 c. 10; and see Calmet.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Ezekiel 29:12
“As Israel passed through a term of wilderness discipline (compare Eze 20:35, &c.), which was in its essential features to be repeated again, so it was to be with Egypt [FAIRBAIRN].”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
3. (vv. 13-16)
a.At the end of forty years: The oracle turns to restoration on schedule, at the end of forty years, gathered back to Pathros, the land of their habitation, upper Egypt where the nation had begun. But the return is deliberately modest, the basest of the kingdoms, no longer able to exalt itself above the nations or rule over them, a diminished Egypt rather than a restored power. The purpose is stated for Israel's benefit as much as Egypt's, no more the confidence of the house of Israel, which bringeth their iniquity to remembrance, so that Judah is finally cured of the temptation to lean on this particular reed.
Ezekiel 29:13, 1 voice
Ezekiel 29:13
“Will I gather the Egyptians - It is probable that Cyrus gave permission to the Egyptians brought to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, to return to their own country. And if we reckon from the commencement of the war against Pharaoh-hophra by Nebuchadnezzar, to the third or fourth year of Cyrus, the term will be about forty years.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Ezekiel 29:14, 3 voices
Ezekiel 29:14
“And I will bring again the captivity of Egypt,.... For what is done by men, under the direction and influence of divine Providence, is said to be done by the Lord, as this was, though by the means of Cyrus: and will cause them to return into the land of Pathros; which was a part of the land of Egypt; perhaps so called from Pathrusim, the son of Mizraim, from whom Egypt had its name, Gen 10:”
Ezekiel 29:14
“The Thebaid was anciently called "Egypt" [ARISTOTLE]. Therefore it is called the "land of the Egyptians' birth" (Margin, for "habitation"). base kingdom--Under Amasis it was made dependent on Babylon; humbled still more under Cambyses; and though somewhat raised under the Ptolemies, never has it regained its ancient pre-eminence.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Ezekiel 29:14
“Some date the forty years from Nebuchadnezzar's destroying Egypt, others from the desolation of Egypt some time before; however, they end about the first year of Cyrus, when the seventy years' captivity of Judah ended, or soon after. Then this prediction was accomplished, 1.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Ezekiel 29:16, 2 voices
Ezekiel 29:16
“The false confidence of the Israelites “brought to remembrance,” i. e., discovered in the sight of God and man their “iniquity,” i. e., their treachery and perjury to the Chaldaeans; their falsehood being made evident when they “look after” (turn to) the Egyptians and seek their aid in rebellion. The ruin of Egypt shall put an end to all this.”
Ezekiel 29:16
“The prophecy which begins here, it should seem, is continued to the twentieth verse of the next chapter. And Dr. Lightfoot observes that it is the last prophecy we have of this prophet, and should have been last in the book, but is laid here, that all the prophecies against Egypt might come together.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
C. Egypt handed to Babylon as wages for the siege of Tyre
1. (vv. 17-20)
a.in the seven and twentieth year: The date jumps forward, the seven and twentieth year, the latest date in the entire book, some sixteen years after the oracle just given, and Ezekiel here explains history rather than merely predicting it. Nebuchadnezzar's long siege of Tyre, every head made bald, every shoulder peeled with siege labor, had yielded no wages, since the island city held out and the earlier Tyre oracle's total destruction had not landed as the leveling of the mainland city might have suggested. Egypt is now given to Babylon as the wages Tyre never paid, and Keil and Barnes together read this as Scripture's own honest accounting of a prophecy's outcome, the general judgment on Tyre standing while its precise shape is corrected by the prophet who gave it.
Ezekiel 29:17, 2 voices
Ezekiel 29:17
“And it came to pass in the seven and twentieth year,.... Of Jeconiah's captivity; or of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, as Jarchi, Kimchi, and Abendana, from Seder Olam Rabba (z), observe; though it was in the thirty fifth year of his reign that Tyre was taken by him; and after that Egypt was given him: in the first month, in the first day of the month: the month Nisan, which answers to part of March, and part of April.”
Ezekiel 29:17
“The prophet places this prediction out of chronological order, that he may point out what had not been stated in the foregoing prophecy, namely, that the agent who should strike the first blow on Egypt should be the Chaldaean king, Nebuchadnezzar.”
Ezekiel 29:18, 3 voices
Ezekiel 29:18
“Caused his army to serve a great service against Tyrus - He was thirteen years employed in the siege. See Joseph. Antiq. lib. 10 c. 11. In this siege his soldiers endured great hardships.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Ezekiel 29:18
“Made bald - Through age, or sicknesses, or continued wearing of helmets. Peeled - Galled with carrying burdens. No wages - For though Tyre was very rich, when first besieged, much wealth was carried away during the siege, much spent and wasted in the siege, and what was left, preserved by articles of surrender.”
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765)evangelical
Ezekiel 29:18
“In prosecuting this siege every head was made bald, and every shoulder peeled, with carrying burdens and labouring in the water when they had a strong tide and a strong town to contend with. Egypt, a large kingdom, being divided within itself, is easily conquered; Tyre, a single city, being unanimous, is with difficulty subdued.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
Ezekiel 29:19, 1 voice
Ezekiel 29:19
“The success of Nebuchadnezzar is implied in Tyre's receiving a king from Babylon, probably one of her captives there, Merbal. take her spoil . . . prey--literally, "spoil her spoil, prey her prey," that is, as she spoiled other nations, so shall she herself be a spoil to Babylon.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Ezekiel 29:20, 1 voice
Ezekiel 29:20
“Verily they have their reward. The conquest of Egypt is spoken of as Nebuchadnezzar's full reward, for that completed his dominion over the then known world in a manner; that was the last of the kingdoms he subdued; when he was master of that he became the head of gold. The mercy God had in store for the house of Israel soon after.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
2. (v. 21)
a.the horn of the house of Israel to bud forth: The chapter's last verse turns from Egypt back to Israel, in that day will I cause the horn of the house of Israel to bud forth, an image of renewed strength tucked into an oracle otherwise about a rival nation's decline. I will give thee the opening of the mouth in the midst of them picks up the sign the prophet was placed under earlier, silence until news arrived that the city had fallen, so this closing line marks Ezekiel's own coming release into speech as much as Israel's coming hope. Fairbairn reads the verse's position, tacked onto an Egypt oracle, as the book's habit of never leaving judgment on the nations as the last word without a glance toward Israel's own future.
Ezekiel 29:21, 3 voices
Ezekiel 29:21
“Will I cause the horn of the house of Israel to bud - This may refer generally to the restoration; but particularly to Zerubbabel, who became one of the leaders of the people from Babylon. Or it may respect Daniel, or Mordecai, or Jeconiah, who, about this time, was brought out of prison by Evil-merodach, and afterwards kindly treated.”
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826)evangelical
Ezekiel 29:21
“Israel to bud-- (Ps 132:17). I will cause its ancient glory to revive: an earnest of Israel's full glory under Messiah, the son of David (Lu 1:69). Even in Babylon an earnest was given of this in Daniel (Da 6:2) and Jeconiah (Jer 52:31).”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)reformed
Ezekiel 29:21
“The day of their deliverance shall begin to dawn, and they shall have some little reviving in their bondage, in the honour that shall be done, 1. To their princes; they are the horns of the house of Israel, the seat of their glory and power.”
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible (1707-1721)puritan
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Ezekiel 29. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Adam Clarke; Albert Barnes; Carl Friedrich Keil, Biblical Commentary on the Prophecies of Ezekiel; Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871); John Gill; John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the Old Testament (1765); Matthew Henry and Patrick Fairbairn, An Exposition of Ezekiel.
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