Lives of Scripture

Several prophetic oracles in Jeremiah and Ezekiel pronounce judgment on Egypt and its king during Judah's final years before the Babylonian conquest. Jeremiah's oracle against Egypt is directed at Pharaoh Neco, whose army was crushed by Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish on the Euphrates (46:1-2), and it closes by mocking his defeat: "Pharaoh king of Egypt is but a big noise; he has let the appointed time pass by" (46:17-25) -- a humiliation that ended Egypt's bid to control the region and left Babylon dominant. Decades later, as Judah's exiles fled to Egypt against Jeremiah's warning, the prophet named a different king, Pharaoh Hophra, declaring that the LORD would "give over Pharaoh Hophra, king of Egypt, into the hand of his enemies" just as He had given Zedekiah into Nebuchadnezzar's hand (44:30) -- a period that also saw Pharaoh's army briefly march out and interrupt Babylon's siege of Jerusalem (37:5-11) and Jeremiah symbolically bury stones at Pharaoh's palace in Tahpanhes, prophesying Nebuchadnezzar's throne would be set there instead (43:9). Ezekiel's extended oracles against an unnamed Pharaoh (chapters 29-32), usually dated to Hophra's reign, pictured Egypt's king as a great river monster God would drag out and destroy, and as a felled cedar once towering over the nations, now brought down to the pit alongside other fallen empires. Together these oracles warn that no earthly power, however mighty, escapes God's judgment or can substitute for trust in Him.