Ezekiel 29:11

God would strike Egypt, and above all in what was its chief boast, its river. This granary of the world and garden of the earth would become a wilderness for forty years, and the Egyptians would be scattered as exiles. So great was the chastening Nebuchadnezzar would inflict.

So this Pharaoh invited Israel to trust him, and he could not make that trust good. When Israel leaned on him, he gave way under them, tore their whole shoulder and left them lame. God must put him in the place where he belongs, and God Himself must break the staff that broke and hurt His people. Egypt's fertility was famous, so God must turn the land into deserts and desolation from one end to the other.

Every careful reader of Scripture will have noticed how often the word "forty" appears there, in relation to days or years. All numbers in God's Word have a meaning, and I think there is little doubt about what the number forty teaches. It seems to me that it usually goes with the probation or testing of man. Or else, under the government of God, it goes with the penalty and judgment of his sin.

But how clear the mouth and the hand of God! It was a measured sentence. The woe would come, and the worst of it would end according to His word, just as surely.

Critics claim that these predictions were never literally fulfilled. They say Nebuchadnezzar did not invade Egypt while Hophra was king... Egypt had such a period of forty years' devastation, though the exact history of it may not be known to us. Prophecy is not learned from historical events, but history is revealed in prophecy. We believe prophecies, not because history has measured up to them, but we believe them because they are the inerrant Word of God.

The forty years from the time of this prophecy would reach to about the fall of the Babylonian empire... What follows almost at once makes it plain that God uses Nebuchadnezzar's hand to strike Egypt. Critics have doubted whether Nebuchadnezzar himself was ever in Egypt. Yet we now have proof from Egyptian and Babylonian records together that he was there twice. It is even stated that he ravaged the land as far as Syene.

Egypt had to be dependent too, but not so directly. Its river was its boast, and the sources of its supply were too far off to be easily recognised. Egypt is a vivid picture of the world in its self-sufficiency and independence of God.