The mighty chiefs shall speak of them, with their helpers, out of the midst of Sheol: ‘They have come 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?
Where the Verse Sits
This verse belongs to the second half of the chapter. One commentator sets out the two parts.
William KellyIt 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.
The Word Behind "Hell"
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 Bible TreasuryThe 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...
Voices in the Unseen World
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.
W. W. FeredayCall 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.
Strength That Ended in Weakness
The voices that greet Pharaoh are mighty — and every mention of their strength points to the past.
Arno Clemens GaebeleinWe 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.
"Uncircumcised" — Marked as Outside
The verse ends by calling the mighty "uncircumcised" — lying without the sign that a people belonged to God.
William KellyThere 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.
Numerical Bible NotesIt 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.
Where the Dirge Leads
The song is bleak, but one commentator points past it to resurrection.
Numerical Bible NotesThank 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.
How to Read It Today
One commentator turns from the scene to what a Christian holds in view of eternity.
William KellyThe 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.
Summary
- 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.