individual responsibility

"Yet your people say, 'The way of the Lord is not just,' when it is their own way that is not just. When the righteous turns from his righteousness and does injustice, he shall die for it. And when the wicked turns from his wickedness and does what is just and right, he shall live by this. Yet you say, 'The way of the Lord is not just.' O house of Israel, I will judge each of you according to his ways."
Ezekiel 33:17-20

Israel's perspective on God's justice was skewed. They made the casual observation that God was not just or fair. The text does not give us clarity as to the exact nature of the genesis of their theology, but it appears they were using observations about human culture to deduce what they believed about God. This is almost always a bad idea. God illustrates it by pointing out that human inconsistencies do not change His nature or His methods of dealing with the salvation of people.

All individuals are personally accountable to God. If a man who appears to be outwardly righteous commits a sin, he shall die for it. If a wicked man truly repents, God forgives. God makes the clear claim that He alone is the judge of each person's heart. And that was a message that the nation needed to heed as His judgment fell. Not one person who suffered in the exile was an innocent soul. No sinless or guiltless person could exist, so only the mercies of God would extend to spare any life.

The reminder that mercy exists even in judgment is vital. God never gives up on loving His people. The exile was a mercy extended to those who survived the ransack of Jerusalem. He will be merciful to those who humbly turn to Him, no matter how bad their past. Genuine repentance is known by God and He works in trial to lead hearts back to Him. Ezekiel's passionate defense of the character of God in judgment was just such an evidence of God's mercy at work.

troubling the people

I will trouble the hearts of many peoples, when I bring your destruction among the nations, into the countries that you have not known. I will make many peoples appalled at you, and the hair of their kings shall bristle with horror because of you, when I brandish my sword before them. They shall tremble every moment, every one for his own life, on the day of your downfall.
Ezekiel 32:9-10

This is the result of God's direct intervention bringing judgment to Egypt. The mighty civilization would fall and the entire Mediterranean world would be shaken by the news. Egypt would be a byword and a warning to the rest of the world.

The content of chapter 32 focuses almost exclusively on Pharaoh and the pride of his position as god-king over Egypt. God would reduce Pharaoh to a dead man. The text goes to great lengths to talk about the dead kings of other gentile nations conquered by Babylon to make the point of Pharaoh's mortality. The Egyptians might have worshiped him, but from God's standpoint the king of Egypt was just another dead pagan leader among the many who had fallen by the sword of Babylon.

Ezekiel serves up this message as a warning to Egypt of what will pass. It is also a warning to the nations of the justice that God brings to the earth. And it is a powerful witness to the sovereign rule of God over all things in all time.

Past Perfect Tense

Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Because it towered high and set its top among the clouds, and its heart was proud of its height, I will give it into the hand of a mighty one of the nations. He shall surely deal with it as its wickedness deserves. I have cast it out.
Ezekiel 31:10-11

God continues to warn Egypt of its coming downfall. This message was directed to Pharaoh and was a warning that Egypt's pride would lead to complete annihilation. Its superpower status and military prowess would be taken away. The king would be slain. The political giant would fall like a great tree cut down by woodsmen, never to grow back to towering heights again. Egypt would be cut up and made into whatever things the conquering nations wanted to make of her.

One of the main factors in the move God made to judge Egypt was the pride of the nation. They had built a strong and pervasive civilization. From the fertile banks of the Nile they forged a society and a culture that controlled the Middle East for centuries. But the great power would fall. The culture would be cut off. Egypt will be in ruins by the time God's warnings have been realized.

There is a tense to this communication that is ominous. God is warning Pharaoh of what is to come. But in His communication, it is a done deal. The phrasing of the last sentence shows us the sovereign purpose of God: I have cast it down. It was in real time still to happen. But in the purposes of God, it was done. The judgment was final. There was no undoing it. It was done. That is a sure prophetic word.

the sword in the hand

I will strengthen the arms of the king of Babylon, but the arms of Pharaoh shall fall. Then they shall know that I am the LORD, when I put my sword into the hand of the king of Babylon and he stretches it out against the land of Egypt.
Ezekiel 30:25

You who place Your sword
in the hand of one
to punish another
show your power
in what is done

You speak Your word
through a prophet's speech
to show Your strength
we see the length
of Your controlling reach

You send your sword
into the entire land
and judge sin's weight
upon those who hate
showing Your hand

You always prove Your word
as we receive it
experiencing the mystery
at real time history
and we must believe it

empires on the chessboard

It shall be the most lowly of the kingdoms, and never again exalt itself above the nations. And I will make them so small that they will never again rule over the nations.
Ezekiel 29:15

This is the decree of God for the fate of Egypt. In Ezekiel's lifetime Egypt would fall to Babylon. They would tumble from superpower strength to subservient vassal state. Never again would Egypt be the military and cultural force upon the Middle East. No more would an empire rule from the banks of the Nile.

This was world-shifting change. Israel had always had some relationship with the powerful nation of Egypt. It started from the Exodus. And during the monarchies of Israel and Judah, various alliances and struggles with Israel's powerful and wealthy southern neighbor had defined international relations and military alliances. But the influence of Egypt upon the Holy Land would be permanently and severely diminished by Babylon's armies. God was using Nebuchadnezzar to reshape the world in many ways.

Egypt had always been a source of temptation for Israel and Judah. They would always compare themselves to that mighty empire where their ancestors had toiled in slavery. With the influence of Egypt brought to ruins, God was setting the scene for Israel to thrive when the people resettled the land after the exile.

By the hand of God Babylon rose to become a conquering empire. And by the decree of God, the wealth of Egypt was swallowed up by the army of the Chaldeans. He moves empires at His will. And nothing we trust in is greater than the force of God's will. We only have to look at the magnificent ruins of Egypt to see the truth of that reality.

an end to idolatry

And for the house of Israel there shall be no more a brier to prick or a thorn to hurt them among all their neighbors who have treated them with contempt. Then they will know that I am the Lord GOD.
Ezekiel 28:24

God reveals His purpose in executing judgment on the pagan nations that were the historic enemies of the people of Israel. No more would these sinful influences draw away the hearts of His covenant people into idolatry. He would remove the irritating, damaging, and destructive element by leveling the nations around Israel. This sets the scene for the return of the Jews to the Promised Land.

Once the nations around Israel have been silenced and weakened, the people can return to the land. And that is the promise at the end of the 28th chapter of Ezekiel. God would restore the people to their land to live in safety and blessing. He would bring his people back to enjoy the blessings of the covenant and to delight in Him. They would return to home, to God's blessings, without the threat of pagan temptation to idolatry.

And true to His promises, this is exactly what occurred with Israel. The Jews returned to the land after 70 years of captivity. And the post-exile Israelites never again were marked by rampant idolatry. They were faithful and serious in their obligation to keep covenant with God. The nations immediately around them were not agents of envy or the evil that they once were.

The Jews were still threatened by outside powers... the Greeks and Romans would subjugate them... but never again would internal or external pressure turn them from God to worship idols. God did His good work in justice to Israel and Judah and the nations around them.

wreck of an economy

In their wailing they raise a lamentation for you and lament over you: 'Who is like Tyre, like one destroyed in the midst of the sea?
Ezekiel 27:32

When Tyre was ransacked by the Babylonians, the influence of the Phoenician trading empire began to fail. When Tyre fell, so did much of the normal economy of the Middle East at that time. Tyre was a major cultural influence of the ancient Mediterranean world. It controlled a substantial amount of the shipborne trade. And the lament recorded in the poetry of Ezekiel 27 (comparing the city's fall to a shipwreck) impresses the reader with the impact of the city's decline and fall.

Nebuchadnezzar's army ransacked and burned the city. They carried away its wealth and its skilled businessmen and traders. But the city remained, scarred and diminished all the way up to Alexander the Great's armies. At that time Alexander and the Greeks were the foes who brought final doom to Tyre. The Greeks then supplanted the Phoenicians as masters of the Mediterranean. And the city of Tyre would never again stand a chance of regaining its former glory or its commercial significance.

What is striking in the judgment of Tyre is that God collapsed the entire economy of the Middle East in these events. We humans place high value and hope in our fragile economics. But when God takes down our flimsy house of cards with a simple wave of His hand, we are left to contemplate what is really important. Nothing in human achievement is more impressive than what Almighty God can do. That is one lesson from the fall of Tyre well worth considering.