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Ezekiel 30: What the Passage Says

92 claims across 26 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Ezekiel 30 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

God gives Ezekiel two messages against Egypt. In the first, he announces that the day of the LORD is near: a sword will come against Egypt, her allies and helpers will fall with her, Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon will strip the land, and her idols and cities will be destroyed. The second message, dated to the eleventh year, first month, seventh day, says God has already broken Pharaoh's arm and will break both his arms while strengthening the arms of Babylon's king, scattering the Egyptians among the nations. Each part ends with the statement that they will know he is the LORD.

Claim by Claim

  1. 30:1
    • The word of the LORD came to Ezekiel again.
    • The word came with a message to speak.
  2. 30:2
    • The LORD addressed the prophet as son of man.
    • The LORD commanded him to prophesy and speak.
    • The message is introduced as the words of the Lord GOD.
    • The command is to wail.
    • The wail is: Alas for the day.
  3. 30:3
    • The day is near.
    • The day belonging to the LORD is near.
    • It will be a day of cloud.
    • It will be a time of the nations.
  4. 30:4
    • A sword will come against Egypt.
    • There will be writhing anguish in Cush.
    • This happens when the slain fall in Egypt.
    • They will take away Egypt's multitude (her wealth or throng).
    • Egypt's foundations will be torn down.
  5. 30:5
    • Cush, Put, Lud, all the mixed multitude of peoples, Chub, and the men of the land of the covenant will fall by the sword together with Egypt.
  6. 30:6
    • This is what the LORD says.
    • Those who support Egypt will fall.
    • The pride of her strength will come down.
    • From Migdol to Syene (or, read otherwise, from the tower of Syene) they will fall by the sword within her.
    • This is the declaration of the Lord GOD.
  7. 30:7
    • They will be desolate in the midst of desolated lands.
    • Her cities will be among ruined cities.
  8. 30:8
    • They will know that I am the LORD.
    • The LORD will set fire in Egypt.
    • All Egypt's helpers will be shattered.
  9. 30:9
    • On that day messengers will go out from the LORD in ships.
    • Their purpose is to terrify Cush, which is at ease.
    • Anguish will come upon them on the day of Egypt.
    • It is indeed coming.
  10. 30:10
    • This is what the Lord GOD says.
    • The LORD will put an end to the multitude of Egypt.
    • This will be done by the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon.
  11. 30:11
    • Nebuchadrezzar and his people with him, the most ruthless of the nations, will be brought in to destroy the land.
    • They will draw their swords against Egypt.
    • They will fill the land with the slain.
  12. 30:12
    • The LORD will make the river channels dry.
    • The LORD will sell the land into the hand of wicked men.
    • The LORD will make the land and all that fills it desolate by the hand of strangers.
    • The LORD says that he has spoken it.
  13. 30:13
    • This is what the Lord GOD says.
    • The LORD will destroy the idols.
    • The LORD will put an end to the worthless images from Noph.
    • There will no longer be a prince from the land of Egypt.
    • The LORD will put fear in the land of Egypt.
  14. 30:14
    • The LORD will make Pathros desolate.
    • The LORD will set fire in Zoan.
    • The LORD will execute judgments in No.
  15. 30:15
    • The LORD will pour out his fury on Sin.
    • Sin is the stronghold of Egypt.
    • The LORD will cut off the multitude of No.
  16. 30:16
    • The LORD will set fire in Egypt.
    • Sin will writhe in anguish.
    • No will be broken open.
    • Noph will have distresses daily, or, read otherwise, will face adversaries by day.
  17. 30:17
    • The young men of Aven and of Pibeseth will fall by the sword.
    • These (the cities themselves, or their women) will go into captivity.
  18. 30:18
    • At Tehaphnehes the day will be darkened.
    • This happens when the LORD breaks there the yoke-bars of Egypt.
    • The pride of her strength will cease in her.
    • A cloud will cover her.
    • Her daughters will go into captivity.
  19. 30:19
    • The LORD will execute judgments in Egypt.
    • They will know that I am the LORD.
  20. 30:20
    • This happened in the eleventh year.
    • It happened in the first month.
    • It happened on the seventh day of the month.
    • The word of the LORD came to Ezekiel with a message to speak.
  21. 30:21
    • The LORD addressed the prophet as son of man.
    • The LORD has broken the arm of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
    • The arm has not been bound up so that it could heal.
    • No bandage has been applied to bind it.
    • It has not been made strong enough to grasp a sword.
  22. 30:22
    • Therefore this is what the Lord GOD says.
    • The LORD is against Pharaoh king of Egypt.
    • The LORD will break Pharaoh's arms, both the strong one and the one already broken.
    • The LORD will make the sword fall out of Pharaoh's hand.
  23. 30:23
    • The LORD will scatter the Egyptians among the nations.
    • The LORD will disperse them through the lands.
  24. 30:24
    • The LORD will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon.
    • The LORD will put his own sword in the king of Babylon's hand.
    • The LORD will break Pharaoh's arms.
    • Pharaoh will groan before the king of Babylon with the groanings of a mortally wounded man.
  25. 30:25
    • The LORD will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon.
    • Pharaoh's arms will fall.
    • They will know that I am the LORD.
    • This knowing comes when the LORD puts his sword into the hand of the king of Babylon.
    • The king of Babylon will stretch that sword out against the land of Egypt.
  26. 30:26
    • The LORD will scatter the Egyptians among the nations.
    • The LORD will disperse them through the lands.
    • They will know that I am the LORD.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

30:1
LORD printed in capitals is not a translation but a stand-in for the personal name of Israel's God, written in Hebrew with four letters usually given as YHWH. Ancient Jewish readers did not pronounce it aloud, saying instead the ordinary word for "lord," and English Bibles preserve that substitution by printing LORD. Where the text has that name together with the Hebrew word for "lord" or "master," English versions print "Lord GOD", the sense is something like "Sovereign LORD."
30:2
"Son of man" is simply Hebrew for "human being" or "mortal"; it is how God addresses Ezekiel more than ninety times in this book, and carries no special title or rank. "Wail" is not a general expression of sadness but the loud, formal, public keening raised over a corpse at a funeral. Ezekiel is told to hold Egypt's funeral before Egypt has fallen.
30:3
"The day of the LORD" was already a fixed phrase among Israel's prophets, meaning an occasion when God steps in openly to settle accounts. Popular expectation was that it would fall on Israel's enemies; prophets like Amos and Ezekiel apply it more broadly.
30:4
"Ethiopia" here is the Hebrew Cush, the kingdom on the Nile south of Egypt, in what is now southern Egypt and Sudan, not the modern country of Ethiopia. Its rulers had governed Egypt itself in the century before Ezekiel. The Hebrew word behind "her crowds of people" can mean either a throng or the wealth and abundance a throng represents, which is why translations differ between "multitude" and "riches."
30:5
These are the peoples supplying Egypt's foreign troops. "Libya" translates Put and "Lydia" translates Lud (both are African regions whose exact location is uncertain, and Lud is probably not the Lydia of Asia Minor. "The mixed foreign peoples" renders a word for a mingled population of resident foreigners, often used of hired soldiers. "Chub" occurs nowhere else in the Bible and its identity is unknown; some ancient copies read it as Lub, Libya. "The men from the land that made a treaty" is literally "the sons of the land of the covenant") some ancient interpreters took it as Jewish settlers in Egypt, others as unnamed allied states.
30:6
The King James "tower of Syene" reads the Hebrew word migdol as the common noun "tower." Migdol is in fact a fortress town at Egypt's north-eastern edge, near the frontier with Palestine, and Syene is Aswan at the southern cataract. "From Migdol to Syene" is a way of saying "the whole length of the country," as an English speaker might say "from coast to coast."
30:8
"They shall know that I am the LORD" repeats over and over in Ezekiel, like a chorus in a song. It means people will find out for certain who God is.
30:9
Messengers traveling "in ships" would sail up the Nile, the highway between Egypt and Cush to its south. The King James "careless" does not mean sloppy; in 1611 it meant free of care, unworried, feeling safe.
30:10
Nebuchadrezzar is a more exact spelling of the Babylonian name Nabu-kudurri-usur; he is the same king more often called Nebuchadnezzar. He ruled Babylon 605–562 BC and had already deported Ezekiel and taken Jerusalem.
30:11
"The terrible of the nations" means the army that terrified everyone. In 1611 "terrible" meant causing terror, not just "very bad."
30:12
"The river channels" are the Nile and the network of branches and irrigation canals through the Delta. Egypt had almost no rainfall, so these channels were the entire basis of its farming and wealth; drying them up is a way of saying the country's life-support is cut. "Sell the land" uses the ordinary commercial word: the owner hands over goods and loses all further claim on them.
30:13
Noph is Memphis, the ancient capital at the head of the Delta, just south of modern Cairo, and a major temple city. The word translated "idols" is a deliberately contemptuous Hebrew term used throughout Ezekiel for images of gods.
30:14
Pathros is Upper Egypt, the narrow southern Nile valley, from roughly Memphis to Aswan. Zoan is Tanis, a capital city in the north-eastern Delta. No is Thebes, the great southern city, center of the worship of the god Amun and site of the temple complexes now called Karnak and Luxor. Naming north, south and Delta together covers the whole country.
30:15
Sin is Pelusium, the fortress on the north-eastern coast that guarded the only practical land route into Egypt from Palestine. It is called "the fortress of Egypt" because whoever took it held the door to the country.
30:16
"Rent asunder" is old English for torn wide open, the way you might rip a piece of cloth in two.
30:17
Aven is the city of On, called Heliopolis by the Greeks, the great center of sun worship, at the southern tip of the Delta. The Hebrew vowels here spell it as though it were the word for "trouble" or "wickedness," a scornful pun. Pibeseth is Bubastis, further into the Delta, the city of the cat goddess Bastet.
30:18
Tehaphnehes is Tahpanhes, a frontier garrison town in the eastern Delta, known to the Greeks as Daphnae; Judean refugees settled there after Jerusalem's fall. A "yoke" is the wooden bar strapped across the necks of draft animals to harness them to a load, and is the standard image for one nation's domination of another; the Hebrew here can be read either as the yoke Egypt imposed on others or as the yoke of Egypt's own power being snapped. "Her daughters" is an ordinary Hebrew idiom for the smaller settlements dependent on a city, though it can also be read as the women of the city.
30:20
Ezekiel dates his oracles from the deportation of King Jehoiachin of Judah to Babylon, the exile Ezekiel himself was taken in. The eleventh year, first month, seventh day works out to around April 587 BC, a few months before Jerusalem finally fell to the Babylonians.
30:21
The arm is the standard Hebrew image for military power, as the limb that holds the weapon; to break a ruler's arm is to destroy his ability to fight, not to injure his body. The break already inflicted is generally taken to refer to Pharaoh Hophra's failed march to relieve besieged Jerusalem, after which the Egyptian army withdrew home.
30:22
"The strong, and that which was broken" distinguishes Pharaoh's two arms: one already crippled by the recent failure against Babylon, the other still sound. Breaking both leaves him with no fighting strength at all.
30:23
Winning armies often moved conquered people far from home and mixed them among other nations. Scattered people could not gather together and rebel.
30:24
"The groanings of a deadly wounded man" is the sound of someone dying on a battlefield, not merely someone in pain. The contrast is deliberate: God is described as arming one king's hands and disarming the other's, so the outcome is presented as decided in advance rather than won by Babylonian skill.

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