Page 159 - NOTES ON EZEKIEL

CHAPTER XXXII. 153
lament for her, even for Egypt, and for all her multitude,
saith the Lord Jehovah.” (Ver. 1—16.) The prophet
announces that the king of Egypt should be an object
of horror and pity, and an occasion of mourning, no
longer of fear and envy. Pharaoh should be like the
sea-monster disabled on shore, captured by a crowd of
men, deluging with blood the land of its swimming, a
prey to all birds and beasts, its flesh on the mountains
and the valleys filled with its height, the rivers
also.
It may help the reader to compare Revelation viii.
12, 13 with verses 7, 8. The political destruction
of Egypt is compared to the darkening of the stars, the
clouding of the sun, and the withdrawal of the moon’s
light. The notable difference in the Revelation is
another and distinct feature, which appears to mark that
it was to be only in the west (comp. Rev. xii. 4), the
eastern empire not being involved in this judgment, but
bearing its own afterwards. Here the gloom has for
sphere the land of Egypt.
Then, in verses 9,10, we hear of the effect produced,
•dropping symbol for ordinary language, when countries
which Egypt had not known should know of its de­
struction, and many people and their kings should be
amazed and violently troubled at its fall, trembling each
for liis owrn life in that day.
Verses 11—16 proclaim the coming conqueror who
.should destroy Egypt’s pride as well as its multitudes,
a source of grief among the nations. There lie the
ruins in witness of both, of old splendour, and of utter
sudden desolation, to the extinction of once busy trade
and even of agriculture celebrated over all the world.