The Burden against Egypt

The LORD is pictured riding on a swift cloud into Egypt, and His arrival immediately destabilizes both idols and hearts. Egyptians are stirred against one another in social and political chaos, their spirit is emptied, their plans fail, and in the end they are handed over to harsh mastery, showing that internal collapse and external domination are both instruments of divine judgment.

T¹his is the burden against Egypt: ²“So I will incite Egyptian against Egyptian; ³Then the spirit of the Egyptians will be emptied out from among them, ⁴I will deliver the Egyptians into the hands of a harsh master,

The judgment reaches Egypt's lifeblood as the Nile and its branches dry up, reeds wither, and the fertile growth along its banks disappears. Fishermen mourn, textile workers despair, and laborers are crushed in spirit, because the river system that sustained the country's economy and identity has become an emblem of its divinely imposed barrenness.

⁵The waters of the Nile will dry up, ⁶The canals will stink; ⁷The bulrushes by the Nile, ⁸Then the fishermen will mourn, ⁹The workers in flax will be dismayed, ¹⁰The workers in cloth will be dejected,

Egypt's princes and counselors are then mocked for their inability to perceive what the LORD of Hosts has purposed. Zoan and Memphis become examples of misled wisdom, because God has poured into Egypt a spirit of confusion so that every class, from head to tail, staggers like a drunk and nothing the nation does can set it right.

¹¹The princes of Zoan are mere fools; ¹²Where are your wise men now? ¹³The princes of Zoan have become fools; ¹⁴The LORD has poured into her ¹⁵There is nothing Egypt can do —