Ezekiel 29:19, commentary and pictures

Ezekiel 29 belongs to the prophecies and predictions of judgment against Egypt. It was given six hundred years before Christ, when Egypt and Babylon were struggling for supremacy in world-empire. In it the Lord himself gives the land of Egypt to Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon to conquer and plunder, taking her multitude and her spoil and her prey as the wages for his army.

Those wages were payment for the service his army had performed against Tyre in carrying out God's prophecy, in destroying Tyre. The siege of Tyre had been hard and unrewarded toil, and when the city was finally taken the troops found no spoil to compensate them for their toil. Egypt's spoil became the army's wages because Egypt had helped Tyre resist.

God named Nebuchadnezzar beforehand as the one who would come to break the power of Egypt, and his coming struck the first blow at its authority and power. Egypt, once one of the greatest kingdoms and even the greatest empire, was left a dwindling monarchy that never again lifted itself above the nations, ruled by strangers with no native Egyptian among its rulers, yet still standing enfeebled and humbled to the dust as the basest of kingdoms. The prophecy was literally and exactly fulfilled in the history of Egypt in God's own time and way, first written in prophecy through Ezekiel and then written again in history, and its fulfillment shows the accuracy and truthfulness of God's word and of the prophecies concerning Egypt. That prophecy about Egypt is applied to England taking complete control of Egypt.