CHAP. XXIX.]

10 Or, spoil.

Verse 5. By thy great wisdom and by thy traffick hast thou increased thy riches.'-It will be observed that the early part of this chapter is addressed to the prince' or 'king of Tyre.' Heeren, with reference to these verses, observes: The prophet Ezekiel, in his prophecy against the king of Tyre, makes us acquainted with the power of the sovereign of that city. He represents him as a powerful prince, surrounded with great splendour, but, faithful to the spirit of commercial states, filling his coffers by commerce, and conforming himself at first to the maxims of political wisdom, but soon degenerating into cunning and injustice, the chastisement of which was foretold and duly received. It also results from this remarkable passage, that the revenues of the Tyrian kings, and doubtless those of other Phoenician cities, were founded upon commerce: but we are uninformed whether they arose from dues and customs, or from monopolies exercised by the sovereign, or whether from both sources at once.'

13. Every precious stone was thy covering.'-This verse seems to shew, in a very striking manner, the pitch to which luxury and splendour had arrived among the princely merchants of Tyre.

22. Zidon.'-See the account of Zidon given under Josh. xix., with an engraving, representing the modern town. The Zidonians, like the Tyrians, are believed to be represented in the paintings of Egypt, where they usually appear as allies of the Egyptians. In personai appearance they are represented as a fine muscular race, with features resembling those of the Tyrians and Arvadites. Their statesmen and merchants wore the hair of the head and beard long, with the fillet around the head. The warriors cut their hair, beard, and whiskers short. Their arms and accoutrements were worthy of the fame and wealth of this great city. The helmet was of silver, with a singular ornament at the crown, consisting of a disk and two horns of a heifer, or of the crescent moon. This symbol is not like anything worn in Egypt, but strikingly

ZIDONIANS,

the horn, etc. See the Note on 1 Sam. The armour consisted of plates of some white metal, probably silver, quilted upon a white linen garment. The shield was large and circular, like that of the Philistines. It was of iron rimmed with gold, and ornamented with studs or bosses of the same metal. The sword, which was of bronze, was two-edged, and shaped like the modern See Osborn's poniard. The spear was a long lance. Egypt, pp. 119, 120.

CHAPTER XXIX.

1 The judgment of Pharaoh for his treachery to Israel. 8 The desolation of Egypt. 13 The restoration thereof after forty years. 17 Egypt the reward of

Nebuchadrezzar. 21 Israel shall be restored.

In the tenth year, in the tenth month, in the twelfth day of the month, the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

2 Son of man, set thy face against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and prophesy against him, and against all Egypt:

3 Speak, and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great 'dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My

1 Psal. 74. 13, 14. Isa. 27. 1, and 51. 9.
2 H
VOL. III.

river is mine own, and I have made it for myself.

4 But I will put hooks in thy jaws, and I will cause the fish of thy rivers to stick unto thy scales, and I will bring thee up out of the midst of thy rivers, and all the fish of thy rivers shall stick unto thy scales.

5 And I will leave thee thrown into the wilderness, thee and all the fish of thy rivers: thou shalt fall upon the open fields; thou shalt not be brought together, nor gathered: I have given thee for meat to the beasts of the field and to the fowls of the heaven.

6 And all the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am the LORD, because they have been a 'staff of reed to the house of Israel.

32 Kings 18. 21. Isa. 36. 6. 529

7 When they took hold of thee by thy hand, thou didst break, and rend all their shoulder: and when they leaned upon thee, thou brakest, and madest all their loins to be at a stand.

8 Therefore thus saith the Lord GoD; Behold, I will bring a sword upon thee, and cut off man and beast out of thee.

9 And the land of Egypt shall be desolate and waste; and they shall know that I am the LORD because he hath said, The river is mine, and I have made it.

10 Behold, therefore I am against thee, and against thy rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt 'utterly waste and desolate, from the tower of Syene even unto the border of Ethiopia.

11 No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited forty years.

12 And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years: and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the

17 And it came to pass in the seven and twentieth year, in the first month, in the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

18 Son of man, Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon caused his army to serve a great service against Tyrus: every head was made bald, and every shoulder was peeled: yet had he no wages, nor his army, for Tyrus, for the service that he had served against it:

19 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will give the land of Egypt unto Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon; and he shall take her multitude, and 'take her spoil, and take her prey; and it shall be the wages for his army.

20 I have given him the land of Egypt for his labour wherewith he served against it, because they wrought for me, saith the Lord GOD.

21 In that day will I cause the horn of the house of Israel to bud forth, and I will give thee the opening of the mouth in the midst of them; and they shall know that I am the LORD.

Verse 3. The great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers.'-The crocodile is doubtless alluded to. This animal is elsewhere, and very properly, made to represent the Egyptian king; and it is remarkable that it was also used among the ancients as a symbol of Egypt, and appears as such upon some Roman coins.

1

My river is mine own.'-This was the Nile, which here symbolizes the kingdom of Egypt, as the crocodile in it does the king. The king alluded to is doubtless Apries, the Pharaoh-hophra of Scripture; and it well deserves observation how exactly this vaunting language agrees with the character which Herodotus gives of the same king. He considered himself so securely established, that he is said to have been of opinion that it was beyond the power of a god to deprive him of his kingdom.' (Euterpe, 169.) Yet he was deprived of it by a God whom he knew not. See the account which has been given of his affairs under Jer. xliv. 30. The verses which follow evidently refer to the same events which Jeremiah foretold.

10. From the tower of Syene even unto the border of Ethiopia.'-Syene itself being the last town of Egypt towards the frontier of Ethiopia, this version does not

convey the sense of the original, which is correctly given by Newcome,- From Migdol to Syene, even to the border of Ethiopia.' Migdol, rendered 'tower' in our version, but which should be preserved as a proper name, was in the north of Egypt, while Syene was at its southern frontier; so from Migdol to Syene' is an expression for describing the whole extent of the country, analogous to from Dan to Beersheba.' The cataracts (or rather the first cataract) of the Nile, which occur above this place, and the difficult navigation of the river, make a natural boundary-line, so that Syene (now called Assouan) has under all governments been considered the frontiertown of Egypt in this direction. Speaking more strictly, the boundary may be said to be formed by the mighty terraces of that peculiar kind of reddish granite, called syenite from the name of the place. These terraces, shaped into peaks, stretch across the bed of the Nile, and over them the great river rolls its foaming stream, forming the cataracts so often mentioned in every description of Egypt. It was from the quarries at this place that the Egyptians obtained the stone so frequently employed by them in their obelisks and colossal statues. The town of Syene long retained its importance with a very considerable

population. Ruins of works and buildings, by the successive masters of the land, the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, the Romans, and the Arabians, are still seen on and around the site of the old town, which the present town so closely adjoins on the north, that the northern wall of the old town forms the southern one of the new. The removal is said to have been made in the year 1403 A.D. (806 A.H.), in consequence of a plague, which destroyed 21,000 of the inhabitants; from which the importance of the place, down to comparatively later times, may be estimated. The scenery in this part is very striking:- The river is rocky here, and the navigation, by night at least, dangerous. At the pass of Assouan, ruin and devastation reign around. This pass, which nature has so well fortified, seems ill-treated by man. Hardly anything was to be seen but the vast remains of the old town of Syene, with mud-built walls and hovels on every side. Rocks, forming islands, were in the middle of the stream, upon which shrubs were growing. The scene altogether was wild and forlorn. In the distance appear high mountains, or masses of stone; with trees, corn, and grass, of great height, extending to the water's edge.' Madox's Excursions in the Holy Land, Egypt, etc. i. 285-6.

15. It shall be the basest of the kingdoms.'-By this, and as usually explained, we are to understand that Egypt should speedily become, and should long remain, subject to oppressing strangers. And how markedly this has been accomplished, the slightest acquaintance with history suffices to evince! For more than two thousand years Egypt has ever been subject to a succession of foreign governors. Under the Persians, the Egyptians were allowed at first to retain their own kings, by becoming tributary to the conquerors; repeated attempts, however, having been made by the Egyptians to re-establish their own independence, it was finally annexed by the Persians to their empire as a province, governed by Persians. Such it remained, till it was conquered by Alexander, whose successors established a royal dynasty in Egypt, from the termination of which, through the long series of ages down to our own time, Egypt has never lifted its head in independence, but, under its successive foreign rulers-the Romans, Arabians, Mamelukes, and Turks

has been subject to the most intense oppression from a foreign body of people. Egypt has indeed been an independent kingdom under the Ptolemies and the Saracens, and it may be possible that the present ruler should establish its independence. But this matters not: for these independent sovereigns in Egypt were foreigners, surrounded by people of their own nation, who engrossed all wealth, power and distinction; leaving Egypt as a country, and the proper Egyptians as a people, oppressed and miserable. This is surely a marked fulfilment of prophecy, delivered at a time when Egypt, under its own kings, great and magnificent, took no second place among the nations. And further, where is the nation against which the prophecies were delivered? The present inhabitants of the country are altogether a different people.

The descendants of the ancient Egyptians have usually been sought in the Copts, a body of people few in number, who act as shopkeepers, etc., in Egypt. But since opportunities have been obtained of comparing their persons with the sculptures and statues representing the form and appearance of the ancient Egyptians, their claim to this distinction has been much weakened; and if it be set aside, it remains undetermined where the remnant of the old Egyptian nation should be sought, if any remnant still survives. That, if it does not exist in the Copts, it is not now to be found in the present Egypt, is, however, agreed. On this point see the observations of Dr. Richardson, and also the curious account given by Dr. Madden (Travels, ii. 91-95) of the results obtained by the comparison and measurement of the heads of twelve adult mummies with the heads of twelve living Copts and Nubians. The result seems as decisive against the Copts as that obtained from a comparison of their forms exhibited in ancient paintings and sculptures; but whether equally in favour of the Nubians, as the descendants of the ancient Egyptians, as Madden and others incline to suppose, seems a question not so well determined, nor is the investigation required for our present purpose.

18. Every head was made bald'-from disease, or from continual wearing of the helmet, or from both. Or it may express the duration of the siege, which was such that, in the ordinary course of human life, those who were

CHAPTER XXX.

1 The desolation of Egypt and her helpers. 20 The arm of Babylon shall be strengthened to break the arm of Egypt.

THE word of the LORD came again unto me, saying,

2 Son of man, prophesy and say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Howl ye, Woe worth the day!

3 For the day is near, even the day of the LORD is near, a cloudy day; it shall be the time of the heathen.

4 And the sword shall come upon Egypt, and great 'pain shall be in Ethiopia, when the slain shall fall in Egypt, and they shall take away her multitude, and her foundations shall be broken down.

5 Ethiopia, and Libya, and Lydia, and all the mingled people, and Chub, and the inen of the land that is in league, shall fall with them by the sword.

6 Thus saith the LORD; They also that uphold Egypt shall fall; and the pride of her power shall come down: from the tower of Syene shall they fall in it by the sword, saith the Lord GOD.

7 And they shall be desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities shall be in the midst of the cities that are wasted.

8 And they shall know that I am the LORD, when I have set a fire in Egypt, and when all her helpers shall be 'destroyed.

9 In that day shall messengers go forth from me in ships to make the careless Ethiopians afraid, and great pain shall come upon them, as in the day of Egypt: for, lo, it cometh.

10 Thus saith the Lord GOD; I will also make the multitude of Egypt to cease by the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon.

11 He and his people with him, the terrible of the nations, shall be brought to destroy the land: and they shall draw their swords against Egypt, and fill the land with the slain.

12 And I will make the rivers 'dry, and sell the land into the hand of the wicked: and I will make the land waste, and all that

is therein, by the hand of strangers: I the LORD have spoken it.

13 Thus saith the Lord God; I will also 'destroy the idols, and I will cause their images to cease out of Noph; and there shall be no more a prince of the land of Egypt: and I will put a fear in the land of Egypt.

14 And I will make Pathros desolate, and will set fire in Zoan, and will execute judgments in No.

15 And I will pour my fury upon "Sin, the strength of Egypt; and I will cut off the multitude of No.

16 And I will set fire in Egypt: Sin shall have great pain, and No shall be rent asunder, and Noph shall have distresses daily.

10

17 The young men of 1oAven and of "Pibeseth shall fall by the sword: and these cities shall go into captivity.

18 At Tehaphnehes also the day shall be "2darkened, when I shall break there the yokes of Egypt: and the pomp of her strength shall cease in her as for her, a cloud shall cover her, and her daughters shall go into captivity.

:

19 Thus will I execute judgments in Egypt: and they shall know that I am the LORD.

20 And it came to pass in the eleventh year, in the first month, in the seventh day of the month, that the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

21 Son of man, I have broken the arm of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and, lo, it shall not be bound up to be healed, to put a roller to bind it, to make it strong to hold the sword.

22 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I am against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and will break his arms, the strong, and that which was broken; and I will cause the sword to fall out of his hand.

23 And I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries.

24 And I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, and put my sword in his hand but I will break Pharaoh's arms, and he shall groan before him with the groanings of a deadly wounded man.

25 But I will strengthen the arms of the 6 Heb. the fulness thereof.

5 Heb. drought.

11 Or, Pubastum.

12 Or, restrained.

king of Babylon, and the arms of Pharaoh shall fall down; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall put my sword into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall stretch it out upon the land of Egypt.

26 And I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and disperse them among the countries; and they shall know that I am the LORD.

Verse 14. Zoan.'-See Num. xiii. 22. Some other Egyptian names which here occur have already passed under our notice: we shall now attend to those which have not previously engaged our attention.

17. Aven.'-This place is mentioned by several names in Scripture.-By On, which seems to have been the native Egyptian name, and which occurs in the history of Joseph, who married a daughter of the priest of On, a fact which shews the extreme antiquity of the place. (See the note and cut under Gen. xli. 45.) The destruction of the city, the temple, and the people, which Jeremiah and Ezekiel foretold, was probably accomplished by Nebuchadnezzar.

'Pi-beseth.-The Seventy regard this as the famous city of Bubastis, on the Pelusiac branch of the Nile; and their conclusion has, in this instance, been generally admitted. Bubastis derived its name and celebrity from a magnificent temple, dedicated to the goddess Bubastis, of which a particular description has been given by Herodotus (Euterpe, 138). He identifies Bubastis with Diana, and describes (40) the annual festival celebrated at this place in her honour. The site still bears the name of Tel

bastah; but the great mass of ruins is rather more than half a mile west of the Tel at Chobra and Heryeh. There is no portion of any standing edifice remaining. All is overthrown, and the wide-spread rubbish affords the only remaining evidence of the ancient splendour of Bubastis. The direction of the ruins can, however, easily be traced, and they correspond precisely to the ancient intimations concerning Bubastis.

18. Tehaphnehes.'-We have already mentioned this as usually, and on what appears good grounds, identified with Daphnæ Pelusiæ, not far from Pelusium, and on the eastern branch of the Nile, which took its name from that city. It appears from Jer. xliii. that the kings of Egypt had a royal residence at this town, though there is no record that it was ever considered a capital city. The desolation of the ancient city is so complete, that the site now offers nothing that calls for notice. Tyrius, as cited by Adrichomius (Theatrum Terra Sanctæ, p. 125), says that the site was in his time occupied by a very small town; as it is at present by a poor village, called Safnas,-a manifest modification of the ancient name.

CHAPTER XXXI.

1 A relation unto Pharaoh, 3 of the glory of Assyria, 10 and the fall thereof for pride. 18 The like destruction of Egypt.

AND it came to pass in the eleventh year, in the third month, in the first day of the month, that the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

2 Son of man, speak unto Pharaoh king of Egypt, and to his multitude; Whom art thou like in thy greatness?

3 Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon 'with fair branches, and with a shadowing shroud, and of an high stature; and his top was among the thick boughs.

4 The waters made him great, the deep set him up on high with her rivers running round about his plants, and sent out her 'little rivers unto all the trees of the field.

5 Therefore his height was exalted above all the trees of the field, and his boughs were multiplied, and his branches became long because of the multitude of waters, when he shot forth.

6 All the 'fowls of heaven made their nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the beasts of the field bring forth their young, and under his shadow dwelt all great nations. 7 Thus was he fair in his greatness, in the

length of his branches: for his root was by great waters.

8 The cedars in the 'garden of God could not hide him: the fir trees were not like his boughs, and the chesnut trees were not like his branches; nor any tree in the garden of God was like unto him in his beauty.

9 I have made him fair by the multitude of his branches: so that all the trees of Eden, that were in the garden of God, envied him.

10 Therefore thus saith the Lord GOD; Because thou hast lifted up thyself in height, and he hath shot up his top among the thick boughs, and his heart is lifted up in his height;

11 I have therefore delivered him into the hand of the mighty one of the heathen; "he shall surely deal with him: I have driven him out for his wickedness.

12 And strangers, the terrible of the nations, have cut him off, and have left him : upon the mountains and in all the valleys his branches are fallen, and his boughs are broken by all the rivers of the land; and all the people of the earth are gone down from his shadow, and have left him.

13 Upon his ruin shall all the fowls of the heaven remain, and all the beasts of the field. shall be upon his branches:

14 To the end that none of all the trees by

4 Or, conduits. 5 Or, when it sent them forth. 8 Heb. in doing he shall do unto him.