Bible Commentaries

Ezekiel 32:2. Son of man, take up a lamentation for Pharaoh, compose a funeral elegy for Egypt. Send out thy letters to Egypt as Jeremiah wrote to Babylon, and give them a space for repentance. Say, the lion of the gentiles is coming against him. Herodotus in his second book, Euterpe, relates how Egypt fell successively under the power of Babylon, Persia, and Greece.

Ezekiel 32:7-8. I will cover the heaven—and set darkness upon thy land. I will eclipse the sun, and all the stars of Egypt. This invasion of Nebuchadnezzar took place about four years after the fall of Jerusalem, and assuredly no scourge could be more severe. The conqueror said in his heart, “I will cut off nations not a few.”

Ezekiel 32:21-23. The strong among the mighty. The gibborim, the giants, who were destroyed at the deluge. Job 26:4-5. They shall speak to him out of hell—the wicked whose graves are in the sides of the pit. This is repeated from chap. 31:18. Without a doubt, the prophet here means the state of the dead in the world to come. And if the aspects of those men were so murderous on earth, what must their society be in hell. Send Lazarus that he may certify to my brothers that they come not to this place of torment.

Ezekiel 32:25-27. All of them uncircumcised, slain by the sword. Lowth quotes here a manuscript note in Sir John Chardin, an oriental traveller. En Mingrelie ils dorment tous leur epée sous leur tête. “In Mingrelia they all sleep with their swords under their heads, and their arms by their sides. They are buried in the same manner, with their arms put in the same position.” Herodotus says, that Egypt once had eleven hundred cities, and twenty thousand villages, densely populated; but after those wars, the slaughter being countless, Egypt never recovered the blow.