Ezekiel 29:12

There are two main causes. First, the pride and self-sufficiency we have already spoken of. Second, Egypt has been a breaking staff to Israel. It was a staff of reed, which offered much but never kept its promises, and it brought only ruin to all who trusted it. Going down to Egypt for help was the constant snare of the people of God, even though God had delivered them from that land... The lesson is as plain as it is basic. It is the lesson, "Cease from man, whose breath is in his nostrils, for of what account is he?"

Egypt would be struck, and struck most of all in what was its chief boast, its river. That grain store of the world, that garden of the earth, would become a wilderness for forty years. Its people would be scattered exiles. So great a chastening would Nebuchadnezzar inflict.

Egypt was famous for its fertility. That fertility must therefore be turned into deserts and desolation from one end of the land to the other. Migdol stood on the east border of lower Egypt. Syene stood on the border of upper Egypt, where it met Cush, or Ethiopia. For a time the desolation would be extreme. More than that, the people would be scattered from the land, and the cities laid waste forty years.

Ezekiel was at Babylon. In his prophecy he foretells the humbling of Egypt and of their king, "the great dragon that lies in the midst of his rivers." Egypt would be made desolate for forty years, from Migdol to Syene, and on to the border of Ethiopia — from the north to the south. Abdallatif, an Arab writer, says that Nebuchadnezzar attacked Egypt and ruined the whole country because it sheltered the Jews who fled from him. He says it stayed desolate for forty years.

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 by historical events, but history is revealed in prophecy. We believe prophecies not because history has measured up to them, but because they are the inerrant Word of God.

But how clear the mouth and the hand of God! It was a measured sentence. The trouble would come for certain, and its worst would end just as certainly, according to His word.

At the end of the forty years, God announces a certain measure of restoration. Egypt would come back, but as a low kingdom: never ruling the nations again, and never again the confidence of Israel. This has been Egypt's condition since, as is well known. Under the Ptolemies, the later kings of Egypt, it might seem to be something more than this. Even then it was the foreigner who had possession of the country, and Egypt has been in foreign hands ever since. The more the power that reigned over them lifted itself up, the more was the burden on the people under it.