Ezekiel30chapter 30

The city list is a tour of Egypt, and each name carries something. Migdol was a fortress on the north-eastern frontier; Syene, modern Aswan, was the southern border where the granite quarries were. From Migdol to Syene meant the whole country, end to end.

Memphis, called Noph, was the ancient capital at the head of the Delta with its great temple of Ptah. Thebes, called No, was the religious capital far to the south, home of the enormous temple complexes of Amun. Pathros was Upper Egypt, the long southern valley. Zoan was Tanis in the Delta. Sin was Pelusium, the fortress guarding the eastern approach — the door any invader from Asia had to come through, which is why the text calls it the stronghold of Egypt.

On is Heliopolis, the city of the sun temple, and Pi-beseth is Bubastis, centre of the cat goddess Bastet whose festival Herodotus describes as the largest in Egypt. Tehaphnehes is Tahpanhes in the eastern Delta, and it had a Judean connection: after Gedaliah's murder, refugees from Judah fled there, taking Jeremiah with them against his will.

The oracle's controlling image is an arm. Egyptian art shows the pharaoh with arm raised, gripping a mace or a fistful of enemies, in the same smiting pose for three thousand years. Ezekiel says God has already broken one of Pharaoh's arms and it was never bound up to heal — a reference to Egypt's military failures of the previous years — and now He will break both, so that the sword falls out of his hand.

The phrase the day of the LORD, a day of clouds and a time of doom for the nations, opens the chapter. In the prophets it is the general term for God's decisive intervention, near and far at once.