Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Day of Egypt
Ezekiel 30:1-26
1 Yahweh’s word came again to me, saying, · WEB
A phrase the prophets reserved for the day of Yahweh is applied to Egypt, and the judgment is described as a surgeon describes a broken arm.
The chapter opens with a wail and a phrase with a long history: the day is near, even the day of Yahweh is near. It will be a day of clouds, a time of the nations. That expression normally announces God's decisive intervention in the world. Here it is aimed at one empire and its allies, and the effect is to place a national catastrophe inside a much larger category. What happens to Egypt is a specimen of something.
The list of who falls with her is a list of dependents. Cush, Put, Lud, the mixed people, and the children of the land that is allied go down by the sword. Memphis and the other cities are named one after another, each with its own verb — cut off, broken, given to the fire, made desolate. The method is the same as the ship poem in chapter 27. A catalogue of everything a power consists of is read out, and then read out again as loss.
The image that gives the chapter its force is medical, and it depends on a fact any soldier knew. I have broken the arm of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Behold, it has not been bound up, to apply medicines, to put a bandage to bind it, that it may become strong to hold the sword. An arm that is set and splinted heals. This one has been left, and it will not carry a weapon again. The reference is to a defeat already suffered, and the point is that no recovery was made from it.
What follows is stated with an almost surgical symmetry. Both arms will be broken, the strong one and the one already broken. And at the same time God says I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, and put my sword in his hand. Two rulers, four arms, one hand holding the sword — and the sword is described as God's own, lent out. The chapter is unusually plain that the rise of one empire and the collapse of another are the same act.
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