The Day Reaches Egypt's Allies and Cities

This is the only one of the seven Egypt oracles with no date. It sits between a word from 571 BC (29:17) and one from 587 (30:20), which confirms that the book gathers these chapters by subject. Its theme is the day of the LORD, carried south to the Nile.

“Woe worth the day” is 1611 English: worth here is an old verb meaning “be” or “become”, so the cry means “woe be to the day”. The Hebrew is two short words, hah layyom, “Alas for the day!”

Joel 1:15 raises almost the same cry: “Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand.” Zephaniah 1:15 calls it “a day of clouds and thick darkness”. In chapter 7 the day came for Israel’s land; now “the time of the heathen” has come, the nations’ turn.

Ethiopia is Cush, the Nubian kingdom on the Nile south of Egypt, whose kings had ruled Egypt itself as pharaohs in the century before; Tirhakah king of Ethiopia marched against Sennacherib (2 Kings 19:9). “Her foundations” are the underpinnings of the state, pulled out from under it.

Jeremiah 46:9 lists the same contingents in Pharaoh Necho’s army: “the Ethiopians and the Libyans, that handle the shield; and the Lydians.” The “mingled people” are foreign mercenaries. The last phrase, “the land that is in league”, is literally “the sons of the land of the covenant”, and some suspect Judeans settled in Egypt are meant.

In 591 BC Greek, Carian and Phoenician mercenaries of Psammetichus II carved their names on the colossal statues at Abu Simbel during a campaign into Nubia. Those who “uphold Egypt” were in part foreign soldiers, and they too are included in the fall along the whole length of the land.

The verse repeats 29:12 almost word for word, but the subject has widened: “they” now includes the allies and helpers of verses 5 and 6. Egypt’s wasted cities stand among other wasted cities, one ruin in a landscape of ruins.

Isaiah 31:3 had already joined helper and helped in one fall: “both he that helpeth shall fall, and he that is holpen shall fall down.” Jeremiah, taken to Egypt by the refugees, announced the fire in the same terms: “I will kindle a fire in the houses of the gods of Egypt” (Jeremiah 43:12).

Isaiah 18:1–2 describes the land beyond the rivers of Ethiopia “that sendeth ambassadors by the sea, even in vessels of bulrushes upon the waters”, the papyrus boats of the Nile. Here the traffic goes the other way: messengers sent “from me” carry fear up the river to the south.

“Multitude” is hamon, the keyword of these Egypt chapters, used for Pharaoh’s crowds, armies and pomp (31:2, 18; 32:12, 16). The verse names the one who will make that multitude cease: Nebuchadrezzar, the first time in these oracles that the attacker of Egypt is named.

“Shall be brought” is passive: Babylon’s king and his army arrive because they are led in by another. “He and his people with him” means the king at the head of his own forces. The sword, drawn in chapter 21 over Jerusalem, now comes out against Egypt.

“Rivers” are the Nile’s branches and irrigation channels. Isaiah 19:5–6 had foreseen the same: “the river shall be wasted and dried up... and the brooks of defence shall be emptied and dried up.” “Sell the land” is the verb of Judges 2:14, where God “sold them into the hands of their enemies”.

Noph is Memphis, the ancient capital near modern Cairo, seat of the god Ptah and the Apis bull. “Images” is elilim, literally “nothings”, the word of Isaiah 19:1: “the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his presence”. Two words for idols stand side by side, both contemptuous.

Zoan is Tanis in the north-eastern Delta; Psalm 78:12 places the plagues “in the field of Zoan”. No is Thebes, No-Amon, the great southern capital of the temples of Karnak, whose sack by Assyria in 663 BC Nahum 3:8–10 recalls. Pathros joins them, the far south framed by two royal cities.

Sin is Pelusium, the fortress guarding the eastern edge of the Delta, rightly “the strength of Egypt”; there the Persian Cambyses defeated the last Saite pharaoh in 525 BC. “The multitude of No” is a pun: hamon sounds like Amon, the god of Thebes, and Jeremiah 46:25 makes the same play.

Sin, No and Noph come round again in a new order, like a map being retraced. “Great pain” is the writhing of labour. “Distresses daily” is obscure Hebrew, perhaps “adversaries by day”, enemies at the gates of Memphis in broad daylight.

Aven is On, Heliopolis, the city of the sun god, where Joseph married the daughter of Potipherah, priest of On (Genesis 41:45). Ezekiel spells it Aven, “wickedness”, a deliberate mispronunciation like Hosea’s Beth-aven for Bethel. Pi-beseth is Bubastis, city of the cat goddess Bastet.

Tehaphnehes is Tahpanhes, the frontier town where the Judean refugees took Jeremiah. There he buried stones in the brickwork at the entrance of Pharaoh’s house and said Nebuchadnezzar would set his throne over them (Jeremiah 43:8–10). The “yokes” may be read “sceptres”, as in the Greek.

Eight cities have been named, from Thebes in the far south to Pelusium and Tahpanhes on the north-eastern frontier, with Thebes named three times and Memphis and Pelusium twice. This verse closes the tour, summing up the whole map in a single sentence of judgment.

The date is April 587 BC, about three months after 29:1. Pharaoh Hophra’s relief army had come up from Egypt, the Babylonians had drawn off to meet it, and then they returned to the siege (Jeremiah 37:5–8). The broken arm of the next verse has just happened.

“Roller” is chittul, a bandage, a word found only here. Egypt was famous for its medicine, and the Edwin Smith surgical papyrus describes setting broken arms with splints and linen bindings. Egypt’s own physicians could not set this fracture.

God’s “stretched out arm” brought Israel out of Egypt (Deuteronomy 26:8; Exodus 6:6), and Egyptian royal inscriptions regularly boast of Pharaoh’s strong arm. The old contest is replayed: God breaks both of Pharaoh’s arms, the sound one and the one already broken.

The same Babylonian ration tablets that list oil for Jehoiachin also record Egyptians among the foreign workers and captives fed at Nebuchadnezzar’s court. The scattering sentence, already heard in 29:12, is spoken here and will be spoken once more in verse 26.

“Put my sword in his hand” picks up the sword of chapter 21, sharpened and handed to the slayer. The weapon that fell on Jerusalem now passes to Babylon’s king against Egypt. “Groanings of a deadly wounded man” is the sound of a man who has been run through, the rattle before death.

“Stretch it out” is the verb of the plagues, when Moses was told to stretch out his rod and his hand over Egypt (Exodus 7:19; 10:21). Now the king of Babylon stretches out God’s sword over the same land. Pharaoh’s arms “fall down”, hanging useless at his sides.

At the Red Sea God said, “the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I have gotten me honour upon Pharaoh” (Exodus 14:18). The same recognition closes this chapter, reached not by Israel’s escape but by Egypt’s scattering. The verse repeats verse 23, bracketing the image of the arms.