Chapter 29

It was the tenth year of Sedecias, on the eleventh day of its tenth month, when word came to me from the Lord:

Son of man, turn thy regard towards Pharao, king of Egypt, and prophesy his and all Egypt’s doom.

This message give him from the Lord God: Have at thee, Pharao, king of Egypt, great dragon that liest couched between thy streams, boasting that yonder river is thy own, thou art a god, self-created!

Trust me, I will bridle those jaws of thine, and all the fish in thy river I will fasten to thy scales! Out of the river, fish clinging to scales, I will drag thee,

and leave thee aground in the desert, and thy fish too. None shall go out to search for thy corpse, or bring it home; carrion it shall be for beast on earth, for bird in heaven,

and all the citizens of Egypt shall learn my power. This, because thou didst prove a staff of cane to the men of Israel;

grasped they that staff, it splintered, and there was an arm wounded; leaned they on it, it broke, and their strength gave way under them.

This doom, then, the Lord God pronounces: For thee, the sword; man nor beast will I spare in thee;

a lonely desert thou shalt be, till thou hast learned what my power is, thou that wouldst be river’s lord and river’s maker.

Out upon thee, out upon those streams of thine; a desert Egypt shall be, devastated by the sword, from Syene’s tower to the marches of Ethiopia;

man nor beast shall set foot in it till it has lain forty years desolate.

Land of Egypt shall be as the desert lands are, cities of Egypt as the ruined cities are, for forty years uninhabited; and the men of Egypt shall be scattered wide as earth among the nations.

This too: At the end of forty years I will bring the Egyptians back from their countries of exile,

restore them from banishment, and in Phatures, the land of their birth, give them a home once more; there they shall be a kingdom of little account.

Least of the kingdoms Egypt shall be, no more hold up its head among the nations, too weak for empire now.

No more shall it raise hopes among the men of Israel, and bring upon them the guilt of finding a refuge there; they shall learn that I, the Lord, am their God.

It was on the first day of the twenty-seventh year3 that word came to me from the Lord:

Son of man, here is great drudgery king Nabuchodonosor of Babylon has given his men in the assault upon Tyre; every head worn bald, every shoulder smooth, by the burdens they carried! A thankless service it was they did me there, he and his army;

but now, says the Lord God, I will make use of Egypt to pay Nabuchodonosor his wages; all its great wealth he shall have, spoil for his spoiling, plunder for his plundering, and so his men shall have their reward.

He has fought my battles, and Egypt shall be his recompense, the Lord God says.

When that day comes, new life shall spring from the stock of Israel, and to the men of Israel thou shalt speak with unhampered utterance, to attest my divine power.