Ezekiel 29:15

How wonderful, and how punctually fulfilled! Yet no human cleverness could have forecast it in any of its parts. It was the reversal of Egypt's own experience, and no other nation had a similar destiny or sentence. The more we ponder the word, the more we know its real history. We do not get the prophecy from the history — no one ever truly learned that way. We get the history from the prophecy, for God alone sees and speaks without error or change. Egypt, though restored, rose to power no more. It became a kingdom, but the lowest, and no longer something Israel could trust.

There are mainly two causes of this judgment. First, pride and self-sufficiency. Second, Egypt has been a breaking staff to Israel — a staff of reed, which promised much but never delivered, bringing only ruin to everyone who trusted it. Going down to Egypt for help was the constant snare of God's people. Yet God had rescued them from that land, and in rescuing them they had seen His judgment fall on it. Yet again and again they could turn back to it. Sadly, it is an inconsistency that none of us who knows himself can claim to be free from! … So, for Israel's sake, God must Himself break this staff they leaned on. He does show mercy in the end: Egypt is not finally abandoned to judgment, as Edom or Babylon are. But from now on it must be a "base," that is, a low kingdom — something that will no longer invite the confidence it once invited, and that its neighbours will trust no more.

Ezekiel predicted that after the forty years Egypt would be restored — but as the lowest of all kingdoms, with no more rule, in a reduced condition. That excludes applying this prophecy to the coming millennium. … Prophecy is not learned from historical events; rather, 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. After Egypt's sorrowful forty years of suffering and dispersion, this proud country went into a steady decline … After Nebuchadnezzar's raid, Egypt declined. Under the Persians and the Ptolemies she sank lower still, until she became the granary of Rome.

Egypt is not rising by the aid of Western Europe. She was inclined to rise, and France would have helped her; but England put her down. The Lord has said she shall never rise, but be the lowest of kingdoms.

We should also notice that there is a vast difference between the destinies of Egypt and those of Babylon. Isaiah 19 sets before us the blessings that are in store for Egypt. It concludes like this: "And the LORD will strike Egypt, striking and healing, and they will return to the LORD, and he will listen to their pleas for mercy and heal them. … In that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, whom the LORD of hosts has blessed, saying, 'Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my inheritance'" (Isaiah 19:22-25, ESV).

All blessing comes from keeping the place of a creature. But we constantly tend to leave that place, and we abuse God's mercy to do it, as we have seen. So, in real mercy, judgment must come to humble the pride of man and give him wisdom in the only way possible.