Ezekiel 29:17-20

Egypt and Tyre. This little oracle, the latest in the book (570 B.C.), is one of the most remarkable. It is a practical admission that Ezekiel's elaborate prophecy of the ruin of Tyre (Ezekiel 26 ff.) had not been fulfilled; and it announces that the Babylonian soldiers, whose shoulders had been galled by the navvy work involved in the erection of a mole between the mainland and the island, and, in general, by the hardship of the siege, which is said by Josephus to have lasted thirteen years, would not go unrewarded. They had failed to win the spoil of Tyre either because the siege was unsuccessful or because Tyre capitulated on very favourable terms but in its stead, Ezekiel here promises them the conquest of Egypt, with the spoil which conquest assured. This promise further shows that Ezekiel's forecast of the ruin of Egypt, uttered sixteen years before (Ezekiel 29 ff.), had not yet been fulfilled. But the passage also shows the splendid candour of the prophet, in allowing these unfulfilled oracles to stand in his book; and this may fairly be regarded as proof that, in the mind of Ezekiel, they either had been or would be essentially fulfilled. For essentially the prophecies mean that there can be no permanent place in the world for a godless commercialism or for a policy blended of conceit and shuffling insincerity.

Ezekiel 29:21. Possibly these unfulfilled oracles had discredited Ezekiel and again compelled him to silence. But in this, possibly his last utterance, he looks forward with joyful confidence both to his own future and that of Israel. (Horn = strength, prosperity.)