This is a rough chapter honestly. One of the ones you have to wrap your head around the intensity of it. But it’s important to remember what it is – a lament.
There is a grief that comes when someone dies of natural reasons. Things like old age. And then there’s a worse lament of things that didn’t have to be. Where people died of simple things. Like they slipped on ice and were hit by a truck. Or they sneezed while driving and crashed their car.
This is a lament over Egypt that didn’t have to be. They didn’t have to try to set themselves up above God. Not only was that arrogant but it led the nations astray, not just Egypt but those who allied with them. They didn’t have to engage in the evil that they did, but they became corrupt to their soul. God shows mercy even to Gentile nations that repent.
But they did not repent. And now judgment was upon them.
Not just any judgment. The blood of the slain would run through the streets and fill up the ditches. They would fall just like the other nations before them — Assyria, Elam, Meshech adn Tubal, Edom and others. Worse yet they would lie with the uncircumcised which to the clean, circumcised Egyptians was a horror. They worshiped death but their deaths would be the most unglorious. If that wasn’t bad enough all this would come from their archenemy Babylon.
“The sword of Babylon’s king will come against you! I will make your hordes fall by the swords of warriors, all of them ruthless men from the nations. They will ravage Egypt’s pride” (v. 12).
Once again I read that and it seems just like words from a different time in a far away place. My heart beats no faster. But what if I were the one reading it? What if those words were about me and the nation I am in? It would be heart stopping.
The Egyptians thought of themselves as much greater than they were.
“You compare yourself to a lion of the nations, but you are like a monster in the seas. You thrash about in your rivers, church up the waters with your feet, and muddy the rivers” (v. 2).
It isn’t a “monster” per se but rather one of the crocodiles of the Nile. And just like the great crocs were hooked, dragged out onto dry land and butchered, the same would happen with the Egyptians. They were not the invincible lions they thought they were.
No nation is invincible (with the exception of Israel whom God will always sustain in some form or another). Pride is the downfall of so many. It’s the one thing I keep getting going through these many judgments.
Pride is ugly and a contaminant to the many as it spreads. God deals with it in nations. And he deals with it in us.
It’s best to acknowledge Him before He has to humble us.
