Ezekiel 32:18

The Spirit of God adds one final message in two parts. The first half of this chapter 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 put on show before all, and this under the king of Babylon. The other part develops what the previous chapter sketched more briefly. The once mighty king and his multitude now lie weak in the lower parts of the earth, yes, in Sheol, like all who had fallen before him. They comfort him with nothing better than this: he and his people share the unavoidable doom of princes and peoples.

We look here into sheol and see the nations gathered there, stripped of their glory, in 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, and 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 in it! "Whom do you surpass in beauty? Go down and be laid with the uncircumcised."

Sheol and the grave are now seen as receiving their claim, and the nations that have already passed into the shadow are those with whom Pharaoh and Egypt are now to be joined... It is a judgment, as we see, not of individuals, but of nations — the judgment of the whole world, so far as it had yet come into the light of revelation. It takes the circumcised with the uncircumcised, for Egypt was outwardly a circumcised people, but for them it meant nothing. Now all are made equal in the thing that merges all distinctions: the common lifelessness and shadow of death.

Here it is the judgment that sweeps off the earth after long patience and sends down the boastful to the pit. There lie the fairest, without a sign of relationship to God, "with the uncircumcised." There in utter weakness and humiliation lie Assyria, Elam, Meshech and Tubal, Edom, Sidon and other peoples north of Palestine. 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.

The devout Jew knew from God ahead of time what judgments would fall on the nations, and why. His heart was not to be unfeeling, still less to insult their fallen enemy and snare, old and recent. The Christian feels for people in view of eternity. But, thank God, God has entrusted him with the gospel, with the ministry of reconciliation. That ministry rests on the atonement of Him who was once here revealing God in perfect grace, but despised and rejected by men.

Thank God, we are going to come out 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 whatever. He is out of account, so God is free to show Himself as He desires. 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, and Assyria also, as Isaiah testifies.