Ezekiel 30

The TorahRooted Bible (TRB), translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek.

The day of Egypt

¹ The word of Yahweh came to me, saying, ² Son of man, prophesy and say, Thus says Adonai Yahweh: Wail, "Alas for the day!" ³ For the day is near, the day of Yahweh is near; a day of clouds, a time of the nations it shall be. ⁴ A sword shall come upon Egypt, and anguish shall be in Cush, when the slain fall in Egypt, and they take away her wealth, and her foundations are torn down. ⁵ Cush, Put and Lud, and all the mixed people, and Kub, and the people of the land of the covenant shall fall with them by the sword.

⁶ Thus says Yahweh: Those who support Egypt shall fall, and the pride of her strength shall come down; from Migdol to Syene they shall fall within her by the sword, declares Adonai Yahweh. ⁷ And they shall be desolate in the midst of desolated countries, and her cities shall be in the midst of ruined cities. ⁸ And they will know that I am Yahweh, when I set fire in Egypt and all her helpers are broken. ⁹ In that day messengers shall go out from before Me in ships to terrify unsuspecting Cush; and anguish shall come upon them, as on the day of Egypt; for see, it comes!

¹⁰ Thus says Adonai Yahweh: I will put an end to the multitude of Egypt by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. ¹¹ He and his people with him, the most ruthless of the nations, shall be brought in to destroy the land; and they shall draw their swords against Egypt and fill the land with the slain. ¹² And I will make the rivers dry, and sell the land into the hand of evil men; and I will make the land and all that fills it desolate by the hand of strangers. I, Yahweh, have spoken.

¹³ Thus says Adonai Yahweh: I will destroy the idols and put an end to the worthless gods from Memphis; there shall no longer be a prince from the land of Egypt; and I will put fear in the land of Egypt. ¹⁴ I will make Pathros desolate, and set fire in Zoan, and execute judgments on Thebes. ¹⁵ And I will pour out My wrath on Sin, the stronghold of Egypt, and cut off the multitude of Thebes. ¹⁶ And I will set fire in Egypt; Sin shall writhe in anguish, Thebes shall be breached, and Memphis shall face adversaries by day. ¹⁷ The young men of Aven and of Pi-beseth shall fall by the sword, and they shall go into captivity. ¹⁸ At Tahpanhes the day shall be darkened, when I break there the yokes of Egypt, and the pride of her strength shall come to an end in her; a cloud shall cover her, and her daughters shall go into captivity. ¹⁹ Thus I will execute judgments on Egypt; and they will know that I am Yahweh.

The broken arm of Pharaoh

²⁰ And it came to pass in the eleventh year, in the first month, on the seventh day of the month, that the word of Yahweh came to me, saying, ²¹ Son of man, I have broken the arm of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and see, it has not been bound up, to apply remedies, to put on a bandage to bind it, to make it strong to hold the sword. ²² Therefore thus says Adonai Yahweh: See, I am against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and I will break his arms, both the strong one and the one that was broken; and I will make the sword fall from his hand. ²³ And I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations and disperse them through the countries. ²⁴ I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon and put My sword in his hand; but I will break the arms of Pharaoh, and he will groan before him with the groanings of a mortally wounded man. ²⁵ I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, but the arms of Pharaoh shall fall; and they will know that I am Yahweh, when I put My sword into the hand of the king of Babylon and he stretches it out against the land of Egypt. ²⁶ And I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations and disperse them through the countries; and they will know that I am Yahweh.

Notes

• 30:3 The cry "the day of Yahweh is near" is the same as in Isaiah 13:6, "Wail, for the day of Yahweh is near!", and Ezekiel had used it against his own land (7:7). Now the day falls on Egypt, "a time of the nations," the hour when Yahweh judges the nations; "a day of clouds" is the dark day of judgment that Joel and Zephaniah also describe (Joel 2:2; Zephaniah 1:15).
• 30:5 These are Egypt's allies and hired troops: Cush, the land south of Egypt along the Nile; Put, probably Libya; Lud, perhaps the Lydians of Asia Minor, known as mercenaries, or an African people; "the mixed people," foreigners living among them (as in Jeremiah 25:20). Kub is unknown, and the ancient Greek translation reads "Libyans." "The people of the land of the covenant" is uncertain: some think of allied lands bound to Egypt by treaty, others of the men of Judah who had fled to Egypt (Jeremiah 43-44).
• 30:6 "From Migdol to Syene" means the whole land, as "from Dan to Beersheba" does for Israel. Migdol ("tower") was a frontier fortress in the northeast, near the Nile delta (compare Exodus 14:2; Jeremiah 44:1), and Syene, today Aswan, stood at the first cataract of the Nile on the southern border with Cush (see the note at Isaiah 49:12).
• 30:13 Verses 13-18 name Egypt's great cities one by one, from the delta in the north to Thebes in the south. Memphis (Hebrew Noph), the old capital of Lower Egypt, is judged first, with its "worthless gods" (elilim, "nothings," as in Isaiah 19:1). Zoan (Tanis) lay in the delta (Isaiah 19:11); Thebes (Hebrew No) was the great city of Upper Egypt (see the note at Jeremiah 46:25); Sin, "the stronghold of Egypt," is usually identified with Pelusium on the eastern frontier; and Tahpanhes was the border town where Jeremiah was taken (Jeremiah 43:7).
• 30:17 Aven (awen, "wickedness, nothingness") is a play on On, the city of the sun god, called Heliopolis by the Greeks, where Joseph's father-in-law was priest (Genesis 41:45); Hosea makes a similar play when he calls Bethel "Beth-aven" (Hosea 4:15). Pi-beseth is Bubastis in the delta, the city of the cat goddess Bastet. "They" in the last line are probably the cities themselves, or their women.
• 30:18 "Shall be darkened" (chashakh) follows some Hebrew manuscripts and the ancient translations. The usual Masoretic pointing reads chasakh, "held back," which gives little sense here; the two words differ only by a dot over one letter. Darkness fits the cloud that covers the city in this verse and "a day of clouds" in verse 3.
• 30:21 This word is dated about April 587 BC, a few months before Jerusalem fell. The "arm" is strength in battle: Pharaoh Hophra's army had marched out to relieve Jerusalem but withdrew before the Babylonians (Jeremiah 37:5-7), and his arm was not healed. Yahweh will break both arms, strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, and put His own sword in his hand (verses 22-25).

Ezekiel 29 · Ezekiel 31

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