Son of man, wail for the multitude of Egypt, and cast them down, her and the daughters of the famous nations, unto the lower parts of the earth, with them that go down into the pit.
Ezekiel's last word against Egypt is not a battle cry but a funeral song. God tells the prophet to sing Egypt down to "the world below" — which raises two questions: why does judgment come as mourning, and what is that place?
One commentator sets out the shape of this closing message:
The Spirit of God adds a fresh message in two parts. The first sets out the coming disaster of Pharaoh under the figures of a lion and a crocodile — once the terror of nations, now caught, killed and exposed before everyone, and this under the king of Babylon. The second is a fuller picture of what the previous chapter sketched more briefly: the once mighty king with his crowds now pitifully weak in the lower parts of the earth, yes, in Sheol like all who had fallen before him. His only comfort is that he and his people share the unavoidable doom of princes and peoples.
The date in this chapter carries its own message, and the mood is not triumph.
We now come to the twelfth year and the twelfth month, a period which speaks of the full showing of God's governmental ways. But with this, in which there should be only blessing, there comes instead a voice of lamentation. It reminds us of the real tears wept on earth by One who was God Himself made known in flesh. He wept over those who had despised His gracious invitations and would not be gathered under the wings that would so safely have covered them.
Scripture keeps the place vague, and Ezekiel names it more than any other writer.
As to Sheol, see how vague it is in Scripture: Genesis 42:38; 1 Kings 2:6, 9; Job 11:8 and following; Psalm 86:13; Isaiah 14:11. It meets sight at the grave, and all is dark and silent beyond… As to "lower parts" (of the earth), you have some of Sheol, and some of the earth: Psalm 63:9; 139:15; Isaiah 44:23. It is most common in Ezekiel (Ezek. 26:20; 31:14, 16, 18; 32:18, 24).
The downward language points to something real, and the New Testament changes what a believer sees there:
There is a real truth in this idea, in its being a descent from man's position, a lowering from his natural place on earth. The New Testament removes for the saint the veil of the unseen. He departs to be with Christ, and Christ is not in the heart of the earth… it is most beautifully at the cross of Christ that the veil begins to lift decidedly. "With me in Paradise" may well stand in contrast with Old Testament sayings.
Egypt goes down to join nations already there, and the summons carries a sting of irony:
We look here into sheol and see the nations gathered there, stripped of their glory, in deepest abasement and shame. Their bodies are in the pit, the grave, and their souls in sheol, the unseen regions. God's patience was exhausted with them, the measure of their wickedness became full; then judgments swept them off the earth and they went down into sheol. And what irony there is in it! "Whom do you surpass in beauty? Go down and be laid to rest with the uncircumcised."
Religious status makes no difference to how this ends.
It is a judgment, as we see, not of single people but of nations. It is the judgment of the whole world, so far as it had yet come into the light of revelation — the circumcised with the uncircumcised. Egypt was outwardly a circumcised people, but for whom it meant nothing. Now all are made equal in the one thing that merges every distinction: the common powerlessness and shadow of death. This monotonous dirge, the same for all of them, is part of the lesson meant by it. It is meant to impress us with the common blank and desolation in which so many energies, so many varieties of human character and activity all come into one ruin you cannot tell apart.
The same writer does not leave us there:
Thank God, we are going to come out now into brighter things! But God's lessons must be learned, and in their own order. There is no escape from this. We have to have the sentence of death in ourselves, so that we may not trust in ourselves but in Him who raises the dead. Resurrection is all of God. Here it is plain that man has no ability whatever. He is out of account, and so God is free to show Himself as He desires to do. Then the grave itself is no hindrance to Him. It is instead the means of a brighter display of His divine glory. So among the names here, Egypt herself is to have her resurrection and blessing in the coming day, and Assyria also, as Isaiah witnesses.
- Down — God sends Egypt's crowds and the "daughters of majestic nations" to the world below, the place Ezekiel names more than any other writer.
- Dirge — the judgment arrives as a wail, not a cheer. It recalls the tears of God made known in flesh over those who refused Him.
- Depths — nations that once ruled the world are already there, stripped of their glory, and one monotonous song covers them all.
- Dead level — circumcised and uncircumcised end in one ruin you cannot tell apart. Egypt's outward religion exempted it from nothing.
- Dawn — the descent is not the last word. Resurrection is all of God, and Egypt and Assyria will have blessing in a coming day.
Whom dost thou surpass in beauty? Go down, and be thou laid with the uncircumcised.
God meets Egypt at the edge of the grave. He asks about her beauty, then answers His own question with a command: go down. Two things follow — whether her beauty can save her, and what it means to lie "with the uncircumcised."
This verse belongs to the second half of a long funeral song over Egypt. One writer notes how the tone deepens:
The second half of the song comes two weeks later. It goes still deeper, because it unveils the unseen world. It is the most solemn funeral song ever composed over a heathen people.
God does not argue with Egypt's splendour. He tells her where to lie down, among nations once as impressive as she was.
Here we look into sheol. We see the nations gathered there, stripped of their glory, in the deepest humiliation and shame. Their bodies are in the pit, the grave, and their souls in sheol, the unseen regions. God's patience with them ran out. Their wickedness reached its full measure. Then judgments swept them off the earth, and they went down into sheol. And what irony there is in it! "Whom do you surpass in beauty? Go down and be laid to rest with the uncircumcised." And as the king came there with his multitudes, whom did they find? Asshur, that is Assyria, comes first… She was a cruel, pitiless, destructive power. Now she, who once caused "terror in the land of the living," is helpless, with all her power gone in the unseen world.
To modern ears the word is only a physical detail. In the Bible it is a verdict about standing with God.
Circumcision was the sign of relationship with God, and more besides. To be uncircumcised was to stand completely outside that circle of relationship and privilege.
So Egypt's place carries no mark of belonging to God. Writing on the same phrase in the previous chapter, one writer turns it on Israel too:
To the lower parts of the earth Egypt must go with the rest. The power and the policy of nature can give no exemption… Israel's own circumcision counts as uncircumcision, and they are even more guilty than the Gentiles they despise.
The command has a sharp edge. Egypt did practise circumcision as a national custom, and it changed nothing.
This is a judgment, as we see, not of single people but of nations. It is the judgment of the whole world, as far as the world had yet come into the light of revelation. It falls on the circumcised together with the uncircumcised. Egypt was outwardly a circumcised people, but circumcision meant nothing to them. Now all stand equal in the one thing that merges every distinction: the shared powerlessness and shadow of death. This funeral song never changes; it is the same for all of them. That sameness is part of its lesson. It is meant to impress us with a shared blankness and desolation. So many energies, so many kinds of human character and activity, all come into one ruin you cannot tell apart.
This is not God's last word about Egypt. The same writer points past the grave:
Thank God, we are going to come out now into brighter things! But God's lessons must be learned, and in their own order… Resurrection is all of God. Here it is plain that man has no ability at all. He does not come into account, and so God is free to show Himself as He wants to. Then the grave itself is no obstacle to Him, but instead the means of a brighter display of His divine glory. So among the names here, Egypt herself is to have her resurrection and blessing in the coming day. Assyria too, as Isaiah testifies (Isaiah 19:23-25): "In that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria… Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance."
Ezekiel's hearers were not meant to gloat over a fallen enemy. Nor are we.
The Christian feels for people in view of eternity. But, thank God, God has entrusted him with the gospel, the ministry of reconciliation. It rests on the atonement of the One who was once here revealing God in perfect grace, and yet men despised and rejected Him.
- Down. God's challenge names Egypt's beauty, then sends it downward. The whole chapter is one long descent into the unseen world.
- Down with company. Egypt does not fall alone — Assyria and the rest are already there, once terrifying, now helpless.
- Down without a mark. To lie "with the uncircumcised" is to lie outside the circle of relationship with God.
- Down to a level floor. Egypt's outward rite counted for nothing. Death merges every distinction into one ruin you cannot tell apart.
- Down, then up. Resurrection is God's work alone. God promises Egypt herself blessing in a coming day. So the right response is the gospel, not gloating.
They shall fall in the midst of them that are slain by the sword. The sword hath been given draw her out, and all her multitudes.
Ezekiel's last lament over Egypt does not stop at the battlefield. It follows Pharaoh's crowds down into the grave, where earlier empires already lie. Verse 20 fixes Egypt's place there. She falls among the war dead, and the command goes out to drag her and all her multitudes down.
One writer looks through the prophet's song into the unseen world:
We look here into sheol and see the nations gathered there, stripped of their glory, in deepest abasement and shame. Their bodies are in the pit, the grave, and their souls in sheol, the unseen regions. God's patience with them ran out. The measure of their wickedness became full. Then judgments swept them off the earth, and they passed away and went down into sheol. And what irony there is connected with it! "Whom do you surpass in beauty? Go down and be laid with the uncircumcised."
Egypt falls "amid those who are slain by the sword." The nations already lying there had terrified others with that same sword:
Here it is the judgment that sweeps off the earth after long patience and sends down the boastful to the pit. There lie the finest of them, with no sign of any relationship to God, "with the uncircumcised." There lie Assyria, Elam, Meshech and Tubal, Edom, Zidon and other nations north of Palestine. They lie in utter weakness and humiliation. They are ashamed of the might they were once so proud of, and they carry their disgrace down with those who go to the pit. The Lord's terror remains, and most of all for those who spread the most terror here with the sword.
The word "uncircumcised" runs through this passage, and it carried a weight a modern reader can miss:
The Ephesians, as Gentiles, were called the uncircumcision — a term of great reproach. Circumcision was the sign of relationship with God, and more besides. To be uncircumcised was to be completely outside that circle of relationship and privilege.
Egypt practised circumcision, yet she lies here with the uncircumcised:
It is a judgment, as we see, not of single people, but of nations. It is the judgment of the whole world, so far as the world had yet come into the light of revelation — the circumcised along with the uncircumcised. Egypt was outwardly a circumcised people, but for her it meant nothing. Now they are all made equal in the one thing that merges every distinction: the common lifelessness and shadow of death. This repetitive funeral song, the same for all of them, is part of the lesson it was meant to teach. It is meant to impress on us the common blank and desolation in which so many energies, and so many kinds of human character and activity, all come into one ruin where none can be told apart.
Why does Egypt carry this lesson? One writer starts with the soul that has lost faith in God:
The soul away from God, having lost faith in Him, must have faith in itself, or there would be despair at once. So man's own competence steps in to make up for God's supposed incompetence. He takes freely what God has graciously given him, and then uses it to build himself up in pride and self-sufficiency. We see this clearly in Egypt, and the lesson there is as plain as it is basic. Wherever we look at it, Egypt is the land of independence, as far as heaven is concerned. Rain seldom falls there; it is not expected. The practical thing is that the river is there, always there, giving man little to think about except how best to direct the supply that is now his own.
Ezekiel is told to wail, not to gloat. A reader who takes this chapter seriously is left with sorrow and a message:
The devout Jew knew from God the judgments that fell on the nations before, and why they came. His heart was not to be unfeeling. Still less was he to insult these fallen nations, which had been both his enemy and his snare, old and recent. The Christian feels for people in view of eternity. But, thank God, he is entrusted with the gospel, with the ministry of reconciliation. It rests on the atonement of Him who was once here revealing God in perfect grace, but despised and rejected by men.
This lament is not God's last word about these nations. One writer looks ahead:
Thank God, we are going to emerge now into brighter things! But God's lessons must be learned, and in their own order. There is no escape from this. We have to have the sentence of death in ourselves, so that we may not trust in ourselves but in Him who raises the dead. Resurrection is all of God. Here it is plain that man has no ability at all. He is out of the account, so God is free to show Himself as He desires to do. Then the grave itself is no obstacle to Him. Instead it becomes the means of a brighter display of His divine glory.
- Pride — Egypt's river let her feel independent of heaven. She pictures a world that trusts its own competence.
- Patience — the sword falls only after long patience, when the measure of wickedness is full.
- Parity — death merges all distinctions. Egypt's outward circumcision counts for nothing once she lies among the slain.
- Payment — those who spread the most terror by the sword now lie in the deepest shame.
- Past the pit — resurrection is all of God, so even the grave becomes the setting for a brighter display of His glory.
The strong among the mighty, with them that helped him, shall speak to him out of the midst of Sheol they are gone down, they lie still, the uncircumcised, slain by the sword.
Ezekiel 32 closes a long series of judgments with a funeral song, and in verse 21 Pharaoh reaches the place of the dead. Who are these "mighty chiefs," where do they speak from, and why does the prophet give words to nations long buried?
This verse belongs to the second half of the chapter. One commentator sets out the two parts.
It was not enough to have set out the fall of the Assyrian as a pattern of Egypt's ruin. The Spirit of God adds a fresh message in two parts. The first, in the first half of this chapter, presents the coming disaster of Pharaoh under the figures of a lion and a river dragon. Once the terror of nations, he is now caught, killed and put on show before all, and this under the king of Babylon. The second is a fuller picture of what the previous chapter sketched more shortly: the once mighty monarch and his multitude now weak and pitiful in the lower parts of the earth, yes, in Sheol, like all who had fallen before him. They console him with no better comfort than that he and his people share the unavoidable doom of princes and peoples.
Older English Bibles turn the Hebrew word here into "hell." The ESV keeps it as "Sheol." Earlier translators did not treat the word as fixed.
The Authorised Version renders the word thirty-one times as "grave," three times as "pit," and thirty-one times as "hell." So our excellent translators of 1611 did not consider the word to have one uniform meaning. The Greek Version represents it sixty-one times by Hades...
In this verse the dead speak. Some say the soul sleeps after death, and that the story of the rich man and Lazarus is only a parable. One writer answers that it is not the only such passage.
Call the story a parable if you please (though the Saviour does not), there you have men in the world of spirits the opposite of unconscious — fully alive to the sensations of bliss and woe. Moreover, this is not the only Scripture passage which shows men in conversation in the spirit world; Isaiah 14:9-11 and Ezekiel 32:21 are as explicit, if not as graphic, as Luke 16:19-31.
The voices that greet Pharaoh are mighty — and every mention of their strength points to the past.
We look here into Sheol and see the nations gathered there, stripped of their glory, in deepest abasement and shame. Their bodies are in the pit, the grave, and their souls in Sheol, the unseen regions. ... Assyria was a cruel, pitiless, destructive power, and now she, who once caused "terror in the land of the living," is helpless, with all her power gone in the unseen world.
The verse ends by calling the mighty "uncircumcised" — lying without the sign that a people belonged to God.
There lie the fairest, without a token of relationship to God, "with the uncircumcised." There lie Assyria, Elam, Meshech and Tubal, Edom, Sidon and others north of Palestine, in abject weakness and humiliation. They are ashamed of the might they were once so proud of, and they bear their disgrace with those who go down to the pit. Jehovah's terror remains, and most of all for those who most inflicted terror here with the sword.
Egypt, in fact, practised circumcision — which makes the levelling sharper.
It is a judgment, as we see, not of individuals, but of nations... the circumcised with the uncircumcised; for Egypt was outwardly a circumcised people, but for whom it meant nothing; and now all together made equal in that which merges all distinctions, the common weakness and shadow of death.
The song is bleak, but one commentator points past it to resurrection.
Thank God, we are going to come out now into brighter things! But God's lessons must be learned, and in their own order... Resurrection is all of God. Here it is plain that man has no ability at all. He is out of account, and so God has freedom to show Himself as He desires. Then the grave itself is no hindrance to Him. It becomes the means of a brighter display of His divine glory.
One commentator turns from the scene to what a Christian holds in view of eternity.
The Christian feels for people in view of eternity. But, thank God, he holds the gospel in trust: the ministry of reconciliation founded on the atonement of Him who was once here revealing God in perfect grace, yet despised and rejected by men.
- Descent. The second half of Ezekiel 32 follows Pharaoh past his defeat on earth down into Sheol. The only comfort he finds there is that everyone else came the same way.
- Speech. The dead here talk. With Isaiah 14 and Luke 16, it shows people in the unseen world awake to their state.
- Strength. The voices that greet him are mighty chiefs, but every word about their power looks backward. The terror they spread in the land of the living is gone.
- Stripped. They lie "uncircumcised" — with no sign of relationship to God. Death merges every distinction that once separated one nation from another.
- Sequel. The dirge is not God's last word. Resurrection is all God's work, and the grave becomes a stage for His glory instead of an obstacle.