20221117

undisturbed water

Ezekiel 32:11-16 (JDV)

Ezekiel 32:11 ” ‘Because this is what the Lord Yahveh says: The sword of Babylon’s king will come against you!
Ezekiel 32:12 I will make your processions fall by the swords of warriors, all of them ruthless men from the nations. They will ravage Egypt’s pride, and all its processions will be exterminated.
Ezekiel 32:13 I will slaughter all its cattle that are beside much water. No human foot will muddy them again, and no cattle hooves will disturb them.
Ezekiel 32:14 Then I will let their waters settle and will make their rivers flow like oil. This is the declaration of the Lord Yahveh.
Ezekiel 32:15 When I make the land of Egypt a sinister desolation so that it is emptied of everything in it when I slap down all who live there, then they will know that I am Yahveh.
Ezekiel 32:16 ” ‘The daughters of the nations will chant that dirge. They will chant it over Egypt and all its processions. This is the declaration of the Lord Yahveh.'”

undisturbed water

About verse 15, Cowles writes, “The cattle for which Egypt was celebrated, and of which she thought so much that the cow was the highest object of her worship, came under this sweeping curse. We shall see the force of the language if we consider how their want of water would bring them to the rivers and canals to drink, and how they would poach the banks and foul the waters with their feet. But God would so completely destroy them that no foot of beast or of man should foul those waters anymore. — “ Then will I ” ( v. 14 ) make their waters, not “deep,” but quiet, causing them to subside and lie undisturbed so that they would run freely and clear as oil.” 1

The LORD took the two things the Egyptians prided themselves in most (their river and their cattle) and quieted them both down. He emptied the land of its commerce by making it desolate.

May we never get so caught up in our lives that God has to quiet us that way.

1 Cowles, Henry. Ezekiel and Daniel: With Notes, Critical, Explanatory, and Practical. New York: D. Appleton, 1870. p. 178.