Ezekiel 32:1-16
Ezekiel 32:1-16 laments Egypt’s fall by portraying Pharaoh as a beastly power dragged from the waters, displayed in death, darkened before the nations, and struck by Babylon so that Egypt’s violent greatness gives way to desolation and the knowledge of the Lord.
1 In the twelfth year, in the twelfth month, in the first day of the month, “Yahweh’s word came to me, saying,
2 ‘Son of man, take up a lamentation over Pharaoh king of Egypt, and tell him, “You were likened to a young lion of the nations; yet you are as a monster in the seas. You broke out with your rivers, and troubled the waters with your feet, and fouled their rivers.”
3 The Lord Yahweh says: “I will spread out my net on you with a company of many peoples; and they will bring you up in my net.
4 I will leave you on the land. I will cast you out on the open field, and will cause all the birds of the sky to settle on you. I will satisfy the animals of the whole earth with you.
5 I will lay your flesh on the mountains, and fill the valleys with your height.
6 I will also water the land in which you swim with your blood, even to the mountains. The watercourses will be full of you.
7 When I extinguish you, I will cover the heavens and make its stars dark. I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon won’t give its light.
8 I will make all the bright lights of the sky dark over you, and set darkness on your land,” says the Lord Yahweh.
9 “I will also trouble the hearts of many peoples, when I bring your destruction among the nations, into the countries which you have not known.
10 Yes, I will make many peoples amazed at you, and their kings will be horribly afraid for you, when I brandish my sword before them. They will tremble at every moment, every man for his own life, in the day of your fall.”
11 For the Lord Yahweh says: “The sword of the king of Babylon will come on you.
12 I will cause your multitude to fall by the swords of the mighty. They are all the ruthless of the nations. They will bring the pride of Egypt to nothing, and all its multitude will be destroyed.
13 I will destroy also all its animals from beside many waters. The foot of man won’t trouble them any more, nor will the hoofs of animals trouble them.
14 Then I will make their waters clear, and cause their rivers to run like oil,” says the Lord Yahweh.
15 “When I make the land of Egypt desolate and waste, a land destitute of that of which it was full, when I strike all those who dwell therein, then they will know that I am Yahweh.
16 “ ‘ “This is the lamentation with which they will lament. The daughters of the nations will lament with this. They will lament with it over Egypt, and over all her multitude,” says the Lord Yahweh.’ ”
Ezekiel 32:1-16 laments Egypt’s fall by portraying Pharaoh as a beastly power dragged from the waters, displayed in death, darkened before the nations, and struck by Babylon so that Egypt’s violent greatness gives way to desolation and the knowledge of the LORD.
To command a lament over Pharaoh king of Egypt and announce that the LORD will bring down the ruler who imagined himself like a lion among the nations and a monster in the seas, silencing Egypt’s violent disturbance, exposing its corpse before creation, darkening its glory, and making the nations know that Egypt has fallen under divine judgment.
The oracle is dated in the twelfth year, twelfth month, first day, placing it late in Ezekiel’s sequence of foreign-nations oracles after Jerusalem’s fall had become a defining horizon for the exiles. Egypt had functioned as a long-standing regional power and a tempting political reliance for Judah, but Ezekiel presents Egypt as accountable to the LORD and vulnerable to Babylon’s sword.