Page 150 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

144 NOTES ON EZEKIEL,

saith the Lord Jehovah. And they shall be de?olate
in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her
cities shall be in the midst of the cities that are wasted.
And they shall know that I am Jehovah, when I
have set a fire in Egypt, and when all her helpers shall
be destroyed. In that day shall messengers go forth
from me in ships to make the careless Ethiopians afraid,
and great pain shall come upon them, as in the day of
Egypt; for, lo, it cometh.” (Yer. 6—9.) Not only should
the country renowned for its wisdom among the ancients
but their allies or supports : from Migdol to Syene they
shall fall in her, is the apparent force. Were other
lands desolate? So should the Egyptians be in the
midst of the general waste; no oasis in the desert, but
desert all alike. Even a remoter people, apt to think
themselves secure, should be terrified, and not without
reason: great pain should be on them. It was coming!
“ Thus saith the Lord Jehovah; I will also make the
multitude of Egypt to cease by the hand of Nebuchad­
rezzar king of Babylon. He and his people with him,
the terrible of the nations, shall be brought to destroy
the land: and they shall draw their swords against
Egypt, and fill the land with the slain. And I will
make the rivers dry, and sell the land into the hand of
the wicked: and I will make the land waste, and all
that is therein, by the hand of strangers : I Jehovah
have spoken it.” (Ver. 10—12.) Here the instrument of
divine vengeance is named distinctly : not as if God
had the smallest sympathy with the terrible of the
nations and their unsheathed swords, nor with the
wicked into whose hand the country was sold, nor with
the strangers that wasted it. But the hour to judge