Ezekiel (Session 15) Chapters 29-31

the book of ezekiel and we are in chapters 29 30 and 31. that's three of four chapters on a a single uh subject we are in that section of ezekiel which is judgment on the nations we spent 24 chapters dealing with god's judgment on jerusalem that ezekiel was preaching to his constituencies we now are in that section that's judgment up the nations and we looked at ammon moab and edom and philistia in in in one chat and then tyre and sidon and egypt these are the um seven nations that are singled out for judgment judgment on the nations the first four were in chapter 25. then we had a few about tire in fact we had a special segment of that that actually was about the power behind tyre you may recall that the language went beyond the king of tyre or the prince of tire to the the power behind him very unusual rhetorical device but clearly pretty clear in most scholars mind that from verse 11 to 19 and chapter 28 the whole subject went far beyond the locality of tyre to the power that was behind and literally outlined the origin and career and destiny of none other than satan himself that ha that happens in ezekiel 28 and it also happens in isaiah 14. i want you to be sensitive to that as we go forward because those are very well recognized examples in the scripture where god reaches beyond the local into the power behind the scenes i want you to have your antenna up as we go forward in the next few chapters for some other reasons we finished chapter 28 with sidon the sort of sister city of tyre but not leaves us to egypt and there are four chapters on egypt and we are going to take three of the four tonight we'll leave for next time the ra the last one and perhaps another perspective of all four chapters that you'll get hinted at as we go through tonight so here we are in these chapters from 29 to 30 31 and 32 there are seven prophecies seven oracles against egypt the first one sees pharaoh as a sea monster or most people assume a crocodile for a lot of reasons is to be cast out to be devoured and then and the nation is to be restored then after it's been devoured it'll be restored to a lowly status after 40 years of being in captivity egypt will be given to nebuchadnezzar as a recompense for his feudal siege of tire remember he spent 13 years trying to siege tired didn't get very far so it sounds strange this isn't interpretive on our part that's what the text will tell you god is giving egypt to nebuchadnezzar to give for wages for those 13 years he's been against tyre but in any case egypt's going to be overthrown together with its allies and its wealth and its princes and its cities and then the arms of egypt be broken by the arms of the king of babylon so god is going to use nebuchadnezzar or babylon to as his form of judgment against egypt that's four of seven of these then pharaoh the mighty cedar is used in there's an allegory kind of thing where he's treated as a seed or a tree is cut down he enters the underworld in disgrace a very strange part a language here where pharaoh is not only cut down and wiped out you're going to he's he's going to be sent to sheol and uh then there's a lament over pharaoh the crocodile of egypt destroyed by the king of babylon and then the the the last one of the seven is sort of a dirge a lamentation which describes the descent of egypt into the underworld and encounters these other nations that we've been talking about now there's going to be all kinds of questions that on the one hand say okay here are these prophecies and in many many ways they've all been fulfilled and yet as we study this text i think you'll see there are some overtones that go beyond history and we'll want to take a look at that as we go here so egypt there are lots of other places in the bible where there are maledictions pronounced against egypt in isaiah 19 jeremiah 46 zechariah 14 and others egypt's sin is its pride that's part of it and also leading israel away from the lord those are two separate emphases that we'll see in the passages here now since egypt was a great world powers it it's the the first of the great empires that egypt assyria babylon persia greece rome that's the classical list that we get into with daniel in revelation the rest the first was egypt it was a world power and it it had aspirations for universal dominion and because of all that the prophet ezekiel is going to deal with egypt on sort of a cosmic scale some of the language seems to go far beyond what we might envision of egypt there in chapter 30 verse 3 there's a very strange expression the judgment of egypt was to be on the day of the lord that's a term that should ring in your ears as a very special term and that casts a whole different complexion of what may be going on here anyway as it continues to fall that great nation we felt throughout the entire world and even creation would shudder wow what's going on here something big and all of this had a purpose that the world would know that god is the lord so off we go here starting with ezekiel 29 the first 16 verses are the first of these seven segments pharaoh is pictured here as a sea monster presumably a crocodile that's cast out to be devoured the nation is to be restored after 40 years of being clobbered it'll be restored but kept at a lowly status at a lowly status let's jump in ezekiel 29 verse 1 in the 10th year in the 10th month and the 12th day of the month the word of the lord came to me saying son of man set thy face against pharaoh king of egypt and prophesy against him and against all egypt this is january about 586 seven months before the fall of jerusalem that this is timed here and uh it's interesting that these are many of these are timed one of them is not and i haven't seen any commentators pick up on that but that may be significant for some other reasons that we'll explore as we go here pharaoh at this time was pharaoh hofra or apres as he's called in the greek the 25th dynasty if you will speak and say thus saith the lord god behold i'm against thee pharaoh king of egypt the great dragon that lieth in the midst of its rivers which hath said my river is mine own and i have made it for myself be careful with that one see pharaoh's pride is manifest here and he's going to eat those words or god he's he's the river is mine the the imagery here of them being a crocodile of water just using the egyptian uh emphasis here because the nile is the backbone of egypt it's the secret to its it's his entire progress here so anyway that uh so here's pharaoh called that great dragon the word is tanim in the in the hebrew that's it applies to any large aquatic animal but here it's generally regarded by most commentators as referring to the crocodile and by the way on roman coins that was the emblem of egypt was a crocodile so that all seems to fit so this was one of the worship one of the one of the creatures that egypt worshipped you may recall in the plagues of egypt god sent a plague against each of the things they worshipped it's interesting there are all kinds of strange episodes that come from the things they worship i was fascinated to discover in herodotus that the enterprising son of cyprus cyrus the great of persia he'd done his homework and he found out that egyptians regarded dogs and cats as being sacred right so when he was in a military confrontation with them before his army he put dogs and cats the egyptians wouldn't attack so i think that's kind of interesting the british did a similar kind of thing taking advantage of the muslim fear of pork they put the word out that all their bullets were dipped in pork fat and if you get shot with one of those you don't go to heaven or the points they took advantage of the superstition of the muslims so interesting anyway the blessing of the nile we need to be sensitive to because the original seed of power had been upper egypt that's by the way get used to this lower egypt is north upper egypt is south you see as you go southward your altitude goes higher we tend to get them confused pharah set up his headquarters in lower egypt that is in the northern part at the delta okay made many improvements there that caused egypt to prosper uh relative to his neighbors and so from those improvements he got he felt it was his ingenuity that caused it all and so he is recorded in scripture and also by herodotus who was the uh wrote in the fifth century he was considered the father of history yes he was known for his boasts and his arrogant pride god hates pride so here he's taking credit uh pharaoh and uproar was taking credit for the benefits of the nile big mistake big mistake and uh it's called apres in the greek but you'll see it both ways in the in the literature he was the grandson of pharaoh neko that was the one that defeated king josiah in the of judah at megiddo and josiah was slain at that battle and it's believed by some that it was the levites had taken the ark of a covenant under the protection of josiah uh i mean a paraneco that's what josiah was after and that starts a whole chain which ends up finally being an accident but that's another story the kings jahayakim chaya chin and zedekiah all turned to pharah when jerusalem was besieged they turned to egypt in the hopes of getting an alliance that would protect them against nebuchadnezzar and that turns out to be a bad calculation didn't work and they suffered for that the egyptian army came up went through phoenicia and forced the chaldeans to raise the siege of jerusalem prophet jeremiah announced the doom of pharaoh hofra himself so you'll find this not just an ezekiel you'll find it in jeremiah 46 and elsewhere let's continue verse 4 but god says i will put hooks in thy jaws and will cause the fish of the rivers to stick to unto thy scales and i'll bring thee up out of the midst of the rivers and all the fish of thy rivers shall stick into thy scale yes yes this phrase i'll put hooks in the jaws may ring familiar to you because that's used also in ezekiel in a ezekiel 38 the gog and magog thing same phrase now it's a repeated phrase in the assyrian sculptures when you go to a museum the assyrian sculptures you'll notice that prisoners are represented in the sculptures by a hook in their under lip and a cord held by the king that's the way they took their prisoners with a hook in their lips so that may be part of the echoing here and i will leave thee thrown into the wilderness thee and all thy fish of thy rivers thou shalt fall upon open fields thou shalt not be brought together and are gathered i have given thee for meat to the beasts of the field and to the fowls of the heaven doesn't strike us as you know just flourish flowery language except we realize how that proper burial was a big deal to the egyptians they made a cult of death the mummies and you go through the cairo museum you can spend weeks in that museum it's incredible by the way it really is worth seeing but it's all about death death death improper burial was considered a fear a fearful fate in that ancient world and especially to the egyptians so that echoes here and all the inhabitants of egypt shall know that i am the lord because they have been a staff of reed to the house of israel and where they took hold of thee by thy hand thou didst break and rend all their shoulder and when they lean upon thee thou breakest and makes all their loins to be at a stand a staff of reed see you you and i may not pick up on that but they had a lot of reads there in the nile but reeds are not something you can lean on they they they they don't have any strength so it's not a staff to lean on the the the reed would collapse under your weight and so the whole idiom here implies something they were relying on that was a disappointment that a weakness if you will and that's what egypt turned out to be they weren't strong enough to give israel a protection against nebuchadnezzar so because israel several occasions tried to make alliances with egypt for their protection and egypt either turned on them or in some cases was just ineffective and ran for cover so the other accusation laid to their charge was that they failed in the role of being a staff to israel politically and so that's their history anyway let's go on therefore thus saith the lord god behold i will bring a sword upon me and cut off man and beast out of thee the land of egypt shall be desolate and waste they shall know that i am the lord that phrase is going to occur 54 times in the book of ezekiel that they shall know that i am the lord because he hath said the river is mine and i miss he's quoting god is quoting what huffer had said of himself they shall know that i am the lord because he hath said the river is mine and i have made it okay it's interesting to realize how jealous god is of his creation we always think of god as a redeemer and indeed he is but it's interesting to discover for yourself as you go through the whole bible that his number one priority his first step is to acknowledge him as creator and how tragic it is that scientists today have lost sight of that so anyway this whole thing is anticipa antithesis to the blasphemous boats that was back in verse 3. behold therefore i am against thee god says and against thy rivers and i will make the land of egypt utterly waste and desolate from the tower of saiyan to the border of ethiopia the tower is mygdal that's what the word means and that's about 12 miles southwest of pelusium which is the northeast border of egypt and that was the delta region in the northern or lower lower part but we get used to that the lower part is up north the higher part is down south the aswan are saying was at the first cataract of the southern or upper egypt and it was the southern boundary between egypt and cush which really is a sudan and and those areas okay cushions sometimes translate ethiopia in your bibles actually corresponds to southern egypt the sudan and northern ethiopia not the southern part let's move on behold therefore i'm against thee and against thy rivers and i will make the land of egypt utterly waste and desolate from the tower of sane even to the border of ethiopia and the word sane there is the egyptian sun which really means elephant actually and it's the first cataract of the nile near the aswan dam the today and the southern border uh boundary of egypt near the border of cush or culminating translated ethiopia according to josephus no foot of man shall pass through it nor foot of beast shall pass through it neither shall it be inhabited forty years and i will make the land of egypt desolate the midst of the countries that are desolate and are cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years now we'll scatter the egyptians among the nations and will disperse them through the countries thus saith the lord god at the end of forty years will i gather egyptians from the people whether they were scattered and i'll bring again the captivity of egypt will cause them to return into the land of potheros into the land of their habitation and they shall be there a base kingdom good news is that after 40 years they'll be gathered back the bad news is they'll never again amount to anything that's interesting how history has laid that out 40 years they were after four years they'd be gathered and uh 17 years after ezekiel wrote this nebuchadnezzar came took the egyptians into captivity and they were in captivity 40 years not 70 years like the hebrews no connection okay and pathros of course is the is is upper egypt the southern part it shall be the basest of the kingdoms neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations for i will diminish them that they shall no more rule over the nations and it shall no more and it shall be no more the confidence of the house of israel which bringeth their iniquity to remembrance when they shall look after them but they shall know that i am the lord god so they're not going to be strong anymore and they're no longer going to have the confidence misplaced confidence i might add of israel okay that's that first section now we take the next of the seven egyptians can be given nebuchadnezzar as a recompense for his that is his wages if you will for his futile siege of tyre nebuchadnezzar spent 13 years trying to siege tire we went through all that a few chapters ago but let's go on here it came to pass that in the seventh and twentieth year in the first month in the first day of the month the word lord came to me saying notice he's always timing these things so i'm not gonna spend our time on laying out all the chronology but that's this is march to april of 570. maybe 71 bc son of man nebuchadnezzar the king of babylon caused his army to serve a great service against iris every head was made bald and every shoulder was peeled yet he yet had he no wages for his harmony for tyrus for the service that he had served against it see from god's point of view he was doing god's service to siege tire never got paid for that so egypt's going to be his payment as far as god's concern every head was made bald and every shoulder was rubbed bare is what it reads by the chafing of carrying the load that's the what the rhetoric's trying to suggest here therefore thus saith the lord god behold i will give the land of egypt unto nebuchadnezzar king of babylon and he shall take her multitude and take her spoil and take her prey and it shall be the wages for his army i think that's interesting god wanted to make sure he got paid you see he did he apparently was doing god a favor so he got paid and he invaded that was the 37th year of his reign 568-567 bc i've given him the land of egypt for his labor wherewith he served against it because they wrought for me saith the lord god this is not a commentator's interpretation that's god explaining it to us okay in that day will i cause the horn of the house of israel to bud forth and i will give thee the opening of the mouth in the midst of them and they shall know that i am the lord symbolizing israel's restoration to power when we finish this whole section after chapter 32 we're going to shift the whole subject of ezekiel changes to the restoration of the nation israel so this is a little glimmer of what's coming but this opening of the mouth in other words the verification of the prophet's words to his fellow exiles that the divine judgments would be followed by a new hope and this is sort of a lead-in to what's coming in a few chapters from now i might mention that not only is israel's restored to power but in psalm 132 verse 17 it specifically indicates that the davidic dynasty is to be restored and that's very very important for a lot of other reasons but let's now we're in chapter 30 and we'll take the first 19 verses as a group it's the third of these seven prophecies but here has this one throws us a curveball all phases of egypt's life to be punished when on the day of the lord oh that suddenly makes it eschatological we don't look for something a thousand years ago that happened or whatever this is yet the day of the lord is yet forthcoming okay the word of the lord came again to me saying son of man prophesy and say thus saith the lord god howl ye woe worth the day for the day is near even the day of the lord is near a cloudy day it shall be a time of the heathen the day of the lord that's a phrase that is suddenly we just changed the whole horizon here this is the day of judgment of on sin and the final doom of the heathen world of which egypt is a representative is my suggestion here it's not limited just to egypt as we think of it denotatively it's speaking of egypt connotatively in a much broader sense possibly day of wrath there's lots of verses here i won't try to go through them all they'll be in your notes but obviously amos 5 joel 1 and 2 and 3 actually and so on okay so this whole section then is of an eschatological or end-time character and it's the only one only section that's not dated i think i personally think that's significant i haven't found any other combinations that do i just think it's interesting that it's not dated it may be chronologically limited to that first 16 verses of chapter 29 but it here this one consists of four oracles each beginning with thus saith the lord where the lord came again to me saying son of man prophesy and say thus saith the lord god there's that phrase how you woe worth the day for the day is near even the day of the lord it is near cloudy day it shall be the time of the heathen the heathen what that word really means are the nations israel is not one of the nations when the when it speaks of the nations it's the heathen nations not israel that's in view here but it's a time of wailing and mourning a lamentation for the nations plural now it's taking vengeance on them so the judgment on egypt is the beginning of a worldwide judgment on all the heathen armies of god and that's all through isaiah 13 joel 1 2 and 3. amos 5 obadiah zephaniah on it goes and first thessaloni first and second thessalonians deals with it in ii peter 3 10. okay god continuing in verse 4 and the sword shall come upon egypt and great pain shall be in ethiopia when the slain shall fall in egypt and they shall take away her multitude and her foundations shall be broken down it's interesting that egypt and ethiopia were adversaries we don't think of ethiopia as a major military power but they were very very powerful and it was a it's something that in fact there are some scholars that believe that moses when he was pharaoh's daughter's son he would have been the next pharaoh that he actually may have led an expedition against ethiopia there's some hints of that in certain writings just for what it's worth but here in this situation it says the search will come upon egypt and great pain shall be in ethiopia when the slain shall fall in egypt now the great pain there literally means pains with trembling as of a woman in childbirth now that's very very interesting because that's exactly the flavor of the woman in travail in isaiah 26 which is an echo of the rapture in the old testament if you will but or matthew 24 that the beginning of sorrows or birth pangs it's interesting to see the idioms consistent what are you talking about ezekiel here isaiah 26 or uh matthew 24 what have you i think that's interesting and her foundation shall be broken down that's the political and social institutions in which egypt had her strength and that's going to be echoed through in verse 6 8 30 all the way through here ethiopia libya and lydia and all the mingled people and cub and the men of the land that is in in league shall fall with him by the sword this verse looks pretty simple but it actually leads to some very interesting translational problems as you know i'm on the review committee for the international standard version there's been a lot of discussion about this but see the obviously what's the thought here is that the allies of egypt are to be overthrown but um and the men of the land that is in league what that literally says the sons of the land of the covenant with them and that seems to be a phrase that actually applies to the jews who had migrated to egypt in fact carried jeremiah with them be familiar with that history jeremiah 42 and elsewhere even they shall not escape is what the thought is here they shall fall with them by the sword that is the the the jews that were had flown down there but that's not the biggest problem here the strangest problem is this word mingled people the serious commentator will comment that it's a very peculiar hebrew construction and they're not sure what to make of it the mingled people what does this mean it might be as simple as just referring to mercenary troops in egypt from various lands mostly from the interior of africa perhaps that's conjectures not clear there if you want to get out in the left field a little bit there are some that wonder is this a reference to the myrie clay of daniel 2 43 you may recall in daniel's famous vision in daniel chapter 2 of the metallic image he had head of gold silver arms of a chest of brass belly and thighs of gold brassics a gold silver belly and thighs of brass and legs of iron and then feet iron mixed with clay and daniel goes through and explains each one of those but when he gets to verse 43 in daniel 2 the warehouse thou sauce the iron mixed with miry clay he's explaining what that means at this point he says they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men but they shall not cleave one another even as iron is not mixed with clay what does that mean no one's quite sure but it's a very strange phrase in the hebrew the iron mixed with clay he then switches to a personal pronoun they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men grammatically what that means is that they can't be the seed of men or you can't mingle with the seed of men in other words they mingle the seed of men which means they are something other than the seed of men and that ra that leads to all kinds of conjectures is it possible we're dealing with nephilim here possibly possibly is that what is the hint in in ezekiel don't know i'm not one i don't want to build any castles on conjectures here on the one hand but i want to alert us to be alert as we go to the text because there may be far more going on here than most people really realize let's go on to verse 6. thus saith the lord they also that uphold egypt shall fall the pride of her power shall come down from the power of sin they shall fall in it by the sword saith the lord god so this is not only israel but all those other nations that had looked to egypt for help they'll all be judged together wow and they shall be desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate and our cities shall be in the midst of the cities that are wasted and they shall know that i am the lord 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 see the whole idea of the lord's acts here is to warn the unsuspecting ethiopians and the rest of the world for that matter thus saith the lord god i will also make the multitude of egypt deceased by the hand of nebuchadnezzar the 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 wow so he carried off by nebuchadnezzar he's mentioned here by name now i will make the rivers dry for people in egypt the nile was everything 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 the lord have spoken it that would be a calamity drawing the nile is a calamity for egypt and there's a strange man by the hand of strangers that's exactly what happened egypt fell later on to alexander the great he was a greek and when he died his generals took over the nations he had conquered cleopatra who you associate with egypt was not an egyptian but a greek that ruled over egypt so they were in the hands of strangers and that's been their history the dependence of the noise worth commenting on their whole lives hung on the nile its ability to produce sustenance by its overflowing and fertilizing the fields its overflowing each year was part of the ecology and so god saying that he would make the rivers dry would be a scary threat to them and this has happened literally in our times the famous s-1 dam and the disasters it has brought about ecologically let's talk about that since the as1 dam has been put in place the water is no longer muddy it's clear it's wonderful they've got it all under control sort of except the problem is that what the nile always did was to bring nutrients down river and it provided attraction for fish in the mediterranean so the fishing industry of egypt was always rich and plentiful but now with the swan dam those nutrients down there the fishing industry is in big trouble they're no longer rich no longer a good harvest for fishermen they're all starving a nation of 40 million people now has a problem feeding itself not the granaries of the world as it was at one time in the roman period egypt was the source of grain for rome paul when he goes to malta it was on a grainy ship gets worse than that turns out there's some snails that attack the flax which makes linen and those reeds and other things that the barbecued egypt had been dependent for thousands of years the snails were previously washed away by the annual flooding of the nile now that it doesn't do that every year those snails have multiplied and killed off the very crops which egypt used to use to gain enormous economic benefit some people suggest the best thing they could do is blow up the dam anyway these are from notes i collected many many years ago i'm probably way out of date but i took the took these old notes to include it here just for the perspective i'm probably way out of it ecologically they may have solved these problems let's move on thus saith the lord god i will also destroy the idols and i will cause their images to cease out enough and there shall no more be a prince in the land of egypt i will put a fear in the land of egypt he's going to talk about eight principal cities three in the lower and five in the upper egypt all singled out for all of these eight are singled out for destruction nuff or sometimes called memphis and the greek it's 10 miles south of cairo it's home of the fire fire god and uh the apis bowl and so forth and i will make path rose desolate and we'll set a fire in zone and we'll execute judgments and know patros is upper egypt with thebes or no is his thieves capital fabulous buildings many of the ruins still remain it's an antithesis to zone ortonus the chief city in lower egypt within the delta so that two of them are represent upper and lower egypt in other words and zone of course is the greek thomas the hicksos capital of varus it's uh it's on the eastern delta of the nile west of palesium which was probably goshen by the way and noah is thebes if you will and uh 400 miles south of memphis home of the sun god ammon god says i'll pour my fury upon sin that's the only place that shows up here by the way that particular word the strength of egypt now will cast off the multitude of noah and this is only here in ezekiel it's identified as telferamen which is a frontier fortress on the northeast boundary and about 23 miles southeast of port saeed it's now completely buried in the sand it's over it's history and of course noah's thebes again the great in the upper nile and i would set fire in egypt the sin shall have great pain and no shall be ran asunder and enough shall have distresses daily from pelysium or sin to thebes is a way of speaking of egypt from north to south the whole enchilada as we might put it okay these cities have now disappeared altogether the young men of alvin and pippa saith will shall fall by the sword and these cities shall go into captivity oven is heliopolis in the greek the president tell hussein or sun fountain if you were looking about seven miles northeast of cairo the seat of the sun god ra and it was also the home of joseph's father-in-law incidentally in genesis 41. pivoseth is the is uh present-day telbosta about 30 miles north northeast of cairo house of the goddess boss to whom the cat was sacred okay just thought you'd want to know that i'm always when i think of cats i'm always reminded when my daughter my oldest daughter was very young she came up to me today are there gonna be animals in heaven it must be horses because he rides a horse coming back it's of course there's animals in heaven huh we know there's cats in heaven where else would they get the strings for the harps you know [Music] she almost hit me it kicked off moving on at to happiness the uh also the day shall be darkened and i shall break there this yolks of egypt the pomp of restraint shall cease in her as for her a cloud shall cover her and her daughter shall go into captivity tahoenes which is uh pronounced several different ways daphne if the greek it's uh on the palousia bank of the nile on the eastern frontier fortress about 30 miles southwest of collision it was pharaoh's residence you're dealing in royalty down there thus will execute judgments in egypt and they shall know that i am the lord there is that phrase that occurs maybe more i count 54 times in the book of ezekiel but let's continue chapter 30 the next part next the fourth of the seven the arms of egypt shall be broken by the arms of the king of babylon came to pass the eleventh year in the first month on the seventh day of the month that the word of the lord came unto me saying now we're in about march or april of 586 three months after the where we started if you will four months before the fall of jerusalem son of man i broke in the arm of pharaoh king of egypt and the lord shall not be bound up to be healed to put a roller to bind it to make it strong to hold a sword see in the first in verses 21 22 and 23 the lord is this destroyer pharaoh it's going to shift a little bit from verses 24 25 to 6 where the king of babylon is the agent of the lord in hurting pharaoh broken the arm of pharaoh and that's probably a reference to the recent defeat of pharaoh neko if you will the precedent pharaoh therefore let's saith the lord god behold i'm against pharaoh king of egypt he'll break his arm strong that which was broken and it will cause the sword to fall out of his hand and i will scatter the egyptians among the nations and will disperse them through the countries scatter the egyptians that refers to the army that still remains in egypt for defense and the rest of them that were defeated and fleeing if you will and i will strengthen the arms of the king of babylon and put my sword in his hand but i will break the pharaoh's arms and he shall groan before him with the groanings of a deadly wounded man but i will strengthen the arms of the king of babylon and the arms of fair shall fall down and they shall know that i am the lord when i shall put my sword into the hand of the king of babylon and he shall stretch it out upon the land of egypt so babe is going to conquer egypt and pharaoh would be powerless to stop and all of this was literally fulfilled and i will scatter the egyptians among the nations and disperse them among the countries and they shall know that i am the lord there's that phrase again okay we're in chapter 31. now this is a lament for the fall of pharaoh it came to pass in the 11th year in the third month and the first day of the month that the word of the lord came unto me saying son of man speak unto the pharaoh the king of egypt and to his multitude whom art thou like in thy greatness that's a question behold the assyrian was a cedar in lebanon with fair branches and with a shadowing shroud and of a high stature and his top was among the thick boughs in other words this is equivalent to saying god saying thou art like a mighty the haughty king of assyria as he was overthrown by the chaldeans so shalt thou be the same drawing a parallel here with the assyrians now the syrians got you know in israel's perception was wiped out so there's an analogy here except this whole term of assyrian may be much deeper than most commentators aware of because we know from a passage in isaiah that the pharaoh of the exodus was not an egyptian he was an assyrian according to according to isaiah the first world dictator was in effect in assyria nimrod the the pharaoh that was in there as i say in of the exodus apparently was a syrian assyrian so the term assyrian here may be used to in an allusion to a parallel to israel because that the northern kingdom got wiped out and so forth it may be something deeper than that because we also know from micah 5 and isaiah 10 and a couple of other passages that the antichrist will be an assyrian doesn't come out of western europe that's that's from a misunderstanding about daniel 9 27 because we know that the the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city of the sanctuary well who destroyed the city sanctuary the roman legions yes but the roman legions were not italian they were auxiliaries recruited from assyria by the way and syria and i say and so uh anyway there's a whole study there i encourage you to keep your mind open and do your homework and see what you think but anyway behold this year was a cedar unless there's drawing we're going to talk about trees here uh we're shifting another kind of allegory here now that a cedar in lebanon with fair branches with a shadowing shroud and of a high stature in his top was among the thick boughs the waters made him great the deep set him up on high with her rivers running around about his plants and set out her little rivers onto all the trees of the field therefore his height was exalted above all the trees of the field and his bowels were multiplied and his branches came long because of the multitude of waters when he shot forth it's talking about this assyrian as if he's a tree and he's he's bigger and better than all the rest but he's drawing an analogy right all the fowls of heaven made their nests in his bows and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young and under his shadow dwelt all great nations that sounds pretty cool unless you've done your homework in matthew 13. in matthew 13 the fowls of the air nested in the branches of the mustard plant which had grown unnaturally into a monstrosity large enough to support them the birds there at least are identified as the ministers of satan now if you believe if you want to apply and maybe this isn't the proper place but you can apply what they call the principle of expositional constancy that is the tendency of the holy spirit to you to use a an idiom consistently then maybe these fouls of heaven are more than just birds that happen to lodge in this branch maybe there's something more sinister in view here that something requires some prayerful study thus was he fair in his greatness and in the length of his branches and his root was by great waters and the cedars of the garden of god could not hide him the fir trees were not like his bowels and the chestnut trees were not like his branches nor any tree and the garden of god was like unto him in his beauty that language bother you does that echo a little bit the kind of language that was used of the king of tyre when it was talking about satan you're seeing the same kind of tone here that doesn't mean they're equivalent but just be alert to that as we go on here i have god says i have made him fair by the multitude of his branches so that all the trees of eden that were in the garden of god envied him wow that might be just a figure of speech or it may be a revelation of something a little deeper therefore thus saith the lord god because thou has lifted up thyself in height and he hath shot up his atop among the thick boughs and his heart was lifted up in his height i have therefore delivered him into the hand of the mighty one of the heathen and he shall surely deal with him i have driven him out for his wickedness god speaking and strangers the terrible the nations have cut him off have left him and upon the mountains and in the valleys of his branches are fallen and his bowser broken by all the rivers of the land and all the people of the earth are gone down from his shadow and have left him who all the peoples of the earth this language is rather broad gauge here there's a subtle tone occurring here that's analogous if you will to ezekiel 28 that's where we had all that this is about satan in there right where god clearly reaches through the king of tyre and those idioms just speak of satan there are hints of that same kind of thing here but not quite as strong it's not as crisp not as clear you may recall in daniel 10 it's another one of these strange glimpses where we get a glimpse of that spirit world that's behind we and we understand that behind the powers that we see in the world are demon hosts in daniel 10 you have a glimpse of that an angelic messenger and this bizarre supernatural conflict that's going on invisibly behind the powers there it was persia and greece as the two powers and so forth daniel 10 the whole study if you will so that same perspective seems to be hinted at behind these passages having to do with the pharaoh of egypt upon his ruin shall all the fowls of the heaven remain and all the beasts of the field shall be upon his branches to the end that none of all the trees by the waters exalt themselves for their height neither should it shoot up their top among the thick boughs neither their trees stand up in their height all that drink water for they are all delivered unto death to the nether parts of the earth in the midst of the children of men with them that go down to the pit my goodness what's going on here we're going to go into show before this whole passage is over well thus saith the lord god in the day when he went down to the grave i caused a morning i covered the deep for him i restrained the floods thereof and the great waters were stayed and i caused lebanon which is an idiom for cedars anyway but to mourn for him and all the trees of the field fainted for him strange mix of language here i made the nations to shake at the sound of his fall when i cast him down to sheol hell in your english bible but the word in hebrew is the shill which isn't the grave there's a difference between the abode of the dead and a grave a grave it has title it's physical it's where the body is sheol is a hebrew term it's analogous to what we say in the greek hades not gehenna haiti hades and show for our purposes are essentially synonyms but it's not just a grave that you have a marker and have a someone owns a grave no no it's the netherworld okay cast them down to show with them that descend into the pit and all the trees of eden and the choice and best of lebanon and all that drink water shall be comforted in the nether parts of the earth what does that mean i have no idea they also went down and to show with him unto them that be slain with the sword and they that were his arm that dwelt under his shadow in the midst of the heathen to whom art thou thus like in glory and in greatness among the trees of eden yet shalt thou be brought down to the trees of eden unto the nether parts of the earth thou shalt lie in the midst of the uncircumcised with them that be slain by the sword this is pharaoh in all his multitude saith the lord god now is that pharaoh of egypt or is that language intended to be used more connotatively don't know no no i haven't found any scholars that really deal with it except in a translational sense nebuchadnezzar gives his testimony unrelated to this directly but very profound because nebuchadnezzar wrote a chapter in the bible daniel chapter four all the nations in this passage here were symbolized or characterized by trees as a figure of speech in daniel nebuchadnezzar had a vision of a great tree and through that it reflected his own pride that caused his downfall and nebuchadnezzar himself points out that it was due to his own pride that his kingdom was taken away for seven years for seven years he's traded he's treated as a an asylum patient and we understand from jewish records that it was daniel that took care of him during those seven years so not only did all this kind of thing happen nebuchadnezzar but he wrote how he came out of that and repented of it and he posted his testimony throughout the known world and it's all in daniel chapter four he wrote that chapter okay we have seven oracles i said against egypt right we had the first one in the first 16 verses of chapter 29 the second one was the rest of chapter 29 the third one was the first part of chapter 30 and the fourth one was the next part of chapter 30. then we had the fifth one which was the first part of chapter 31 in fact the whole chapter 31 so we have five out of seven that we've talked about this evening with me so far okay done this sort of deliberately to get most of this behind us in order what we're going to try to put it all in perspective next time if i try to do it for this time it would have run to a little too long so we have number six elemental referral the crocodile will be destroyed by the king of babylon and then a dirge sung at the descent of egypt into the underworld and what's weird about that are they people they meet there and we're going to talk about that next time because these two remaining ones will finish our review of this major section there are three major sections to the the book of ezekiel first one was judgment in jerusalem we took all that these five chapters 29 through 32 those 20th 30th four chapters no no no i was right the first time 25-32 of of the heathen this major section will finish next time to prepare us for the good stuff so to speak the upbeat stuff okay so the next session i want you to review the chapters we just read and and you might just mark the passages that seem to um have a double entendre double meanings maybe and then study carefully chapter 32 and we're going to use the occasion next time to review not just 32 but the whole package and for example you'll discover that the nations that are here enlisted have some interesting things in common they are all muslim nations and you're going to discover islam has its roots long before muhammad it's the worship of the moon god and we'll take we'll go in the scripture and see what's said about that you know try to put this in perspective a perspective that may transcend the picture that we have here because we've got another little problem each one of those ancient tribes edom moab they don't exist anymore they've disappeared no one can trace themselves really to those so what is talking about just geographically or are those nations going to re-emerge oh because they apparently have a judgment that yet is unfulfilled so we're going to talk about that next time try to sort out that what nations are also involved when does all this happen are these prophecies that ezekiel made that were fulfilled back centuries ago and what does islam have to do with any of this islam has everything to do with all of this let's stand for a closing word of prayer

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Length: 52min 16sec (3136 seconds)

Published: Sat May 02 2020