Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Ezekiel 32:32
For I have caused my terror in the land of the living: and he shall be laid in the midst of the uncircumcised with [them that are] slain with the sword, [even] Pharaoh and all his multitude, saith the Lord GOD.
32. I have caused my terror ] So Heb. marg., Heb. text, his terror, as all the versions except Vulg. Throughout the passage “to cause terror” is uniformly employed of the conduct of the various nations when on the stage of history. If used of Jehovah here it would be intended to express a vivid contrast it is he who ultimately puts his terror on the world when he interposes to overthrow these tyrannical and violent nations; cf. Isa 8:13. This somewhat sensational antithesis is not natural, and does not harmonise with the next clause. If his terror be read, the power of Pharaoh and the terror he caused would be attributed to Jehovah. But this is an idea out of harmony with the whole representation, which ascribes the supremacy of the peoples named to their own violence or to the gifts of nature. It is just the point insisted on in all these chapters on the nations that their power was a self-exaltation and rebellion against Jehovah, and for this they perish by the sword and are doomed to eternal dishonour. It seems almost imperative to retain his terror, and alter the verb to the 3rd pers. for he caused his terror therefore he shall be laid, &c. So probably Targ., which paraphrases as in Eze 32:23-26. Similarly Jer. in his Comm. on Ezek.; and so in copies of the Lat.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
My terror – Better his terror, the terror caused by him.
The land of the living – The land of Gods people. It was Yahweh who caused Pharaoh to be terrible to His people, and now, when the time is come, Pharaoh is fallen, and he is laid etc.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Verse 32. I have caused my terror in the land of the living] I have spread dismay through Judea, the land of the living God, where the living oracles were delivered, and where the upright live by faith. When Pharaoh-necho came against Josiah, defeated, and slew him at Megiddo, fear and terror were spread through all the land of Judea; and the allusion here is probably to that circumstance. But even he is now laid with the uncircumcised, and is no more to be distinguished from the common dead.
Much of the phraseology of this chapter may be illustrated by comparing it with Isa 14:1 &c., where see the notes, which the intelligent reader will do well to consult.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
It is God that speaketh, who had punished former tyrants and by a retaliation, that the world might see his just judgments. They were a terror to the world by their cruel oppression, and continued violence, by their covetousness ambition, and pride; and God hath made them a terror his just severities in their punishments. And so, saith God will I do with Pharaoh;
he shall be laid; that is, Pharaoh-hophra shall suffer as they did; since he sinned as thye, he made himself like them by choice of their vices, I will make him like them by like miseries and just recompences and these shall be to his subjects as well as to himself. Hophra, who was strangled, and likely cast out without burial; to Amasis, who was taken out of his tomb and burnt to ashes: so unlike the condition of the dead, which usually is rest to the body, was their condition after death, who in life made it unlike, and imagined it was above, the condition of mortal men.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
32. my terrorthe Marginor Keri. The Hebrew text or Chetib is “histerror,” which gives good sense (Eze 32:25;Eze 32:30). “Myterror” implies that God puts His terror on Pharaoh’smultitude, as they put “their terror” on others, forexample, under Pharaoh-necho on Judea. As “the land of theliving” was the scene of “their terror,” so it shallbe God’s; especially in Judea, He will display His glory to theterror of Israel’s foes (Eze26:20). In Israel’s case the judgment is temporary, ending intheir future restoration under Messiah. In the case of the worldkingdoms which flourished for a time, they fall to rise no more.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
For I have caused my terror in the land of the living,…. Or, “his terror” f; there is a double reading. The Keri or marginal reading, which we follow has it “my terror” g; but the Cetib or writing is his terror; and so read the Septuagint. Syriac, and Arabic versions; both may be taken, and the sense be, I have caused or suffered him, Pharaoh king of Egypt, to be a terror to the nations about him, particularly to the land of Israel, which the Targum expressly mentions as the land of the living; and now I will terrify him who has terrified others:
and he shall be laid in the midst of the uncircumcised with those that are slain with the sword; shall have a common burial with other Heathen nations; even with such, who, in a way of judgment, have perished by the sword of their victorious enemies, as he will:
even Pharaoh and all his multitude, saith the Lord God; the king of Egypt, his subjects, and his soldiers, as numerous as they are; and thus ends this doleful ditty, and funeral dirge or lamentation, composed, taken up, and sung for Pharaoh as ordered, thereby to assure him of his certain destruction.
f “terrorem ejus”, Grotius; “consternationem ejus”, Starckius. g “terrorem meum”, Pagninus, Munster, Tigurine version, Junius & Tremellius, Polanus.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Eze 32:32. For I have caused my terror For I will cast my terror upon the land of the living, that he may lie down in the midst, &c. Houbigant.
REFLECTIONS.1st, Though Egypt was an idolatrous nation, and Pharaoh a wicked prince, the prophet must take up a lamentation over them. For the ministers of God, when they can do no more, must weep over those who, hardened in sin, refuse to shed a tear for themselves.
1. The king of Egypt is compared to a lion, fierce, devouring, ravenous; to a whale, or crocodile with his rivers, a multitude of people, or from his rivers, sallying forth in quest of prey; and as this animal with his feet troubles the waters, so did he with his armies disturb the tranquillity of his neighbours. Note; Ambitious princes are the troublers of the earth, and the scourges of mankind.
2. His destruction is foretold. The same similitude is continued; God, the author of his punishment, shall take him as a great fish in his net, with all his numerous forces, and drag him to land; where, as a fish out of his element, he must perish, and, being cast forth into the open field, become a prey for every fowl and every beast. Yea, so immense will be the carnage, such a torrent of blood be shed, that the valleys shall be filled with the corpses of the slain, and the rivers swelled with human gore, hyperbolically speaking, as high as the mountains. The sword is God’s, the executioners of vengeance the Chaldeans, mighty men, the terrible nations, who shall spoil the pomp, plunder the wealth, and slay the multitude of the Egyptians. Yea, the very cattle shall be destroyed, and the foot of man or beast shall no more disturb the waters, so few should remain. The land throughout shall be desolate, and all its plenty be at an end. Even the luminaries of heaven, as if shocked to behold these ravages, shall be darkened, and clothed in sackcloth; and the once rapid rivers, as if congealed with grief, shall with difficulty roll slowly on their heavy flood.
3. The tidings of Pharaoh’s fall, with his multitudes, will alarm, amaze, and bitterly affect the nations. Not only the neighbours and allies would be vexed at their overthrow, lament them, and tremble at the judgments which they beheld; but even the remotest countries, who had no connection with the Egyptians, shall hear with astonishment the report, and dread every moment, lest that sword of the Lord, brandished before them by the king of Babylon, should fall at last upon their heads. Note. (1.) When the sword of judgment is brandished before us, and we see others smitten, it is high time to tremble for ourselves. (2.) Instead of being humbled by the visitations of God before them, hardened sinners murmur and fret against God.
4. The Lord will make himself awfully known by these strokes of vengeance: the folly of pride and creature-confidence will then appear, and God be found the only true abiding support, and satisfying portion.
2nd, About a fortnight after the former prophesy, according to our version, another was delivered. It brings Pharaoh, with his multitude, to their graves; and the prophet must lament over them, or rather compose a funeral dirge to be sung on this melancholy occasion.
1. Egypt is brought to the grave, and received among the dead. The prophet is ordered to cast them down, because divine power accompanied his prophetic word. Like other famous nations, she must lie low, nor be exempted from the common fate of those, whom in beauty she rivalled. She is delivered to the sword, and dragged, as the corpses of malefactors, in ignominy to the pit. The mighty among the dead, are poetically represented as rising to congratulate Pharaoh on his arrival, Isa 14:9 and admit him free of their dreary mansions.
2. A variety of nations are mentioned who had gone down before him to the grave, and waited, in derision, to pay him mock honour, now become like one of them.
[1.] The Assyrian monarch with his subjects, a vast congregation, once the terror of the living, now slain by the sword, and their graves in rows placed round the sepulchre of their king. Note; They who have been a terror to others, must themselves fall before the king of terrors.
[2.] The Persians with their king next appear; they too had raised a mighty noise in the world, but are now gone down uncircumcised, unholy and profane, into the nether parts of the earth, slain by the sword, and hid in an ignominious grave.
[3.] Meshech and Tubal lie there, supposed to be the Scythian nations, not buried in state as the mighty, but with their swords under their heads, as warriors; and their iniquities shall be upon their bones, dug out of their graves, and ignominiously exposed, though once the terror of the mighty in the land of the living.
[4.] There lies Edom with her kings and princes; their might unable to protect them, and forced to stoop to the devouring sword. Though the circumcised descendants of Abraham, yet, being unlike him in their spirit and temper, they fall among the uncircumcised. No outward privileges can protect those whose hearts are apostatized from God.
[5.] The princes of the north, with the Zidonians, notwithstanding their maritime forces, and strong fortifications, are fallen, and their pride confounded in the dust.
3rdly, Pharaoh, with his multitude slain by the sword, shall make his grave with these, and share that consolation, if such a wretched reflection can be supposed to administer comfort, that he looks round and beholds other mighty monarchs as low and wretched as himself.
In all this description of Egypt’s fall, perhaps something typical may be intended, respecting the ruin of the anti-christian foe, Rev 11:8 which may engage the prophet to dwell the longer upon it. And we may in general read and tremble, while we see sinners so many and mighty cast down into the pit of destruction; and learn how fearful a thing it is to fall into the hands of the living God.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
REFLECTIONS
READER! let us pause, as the Prophet himself hath done, in closing this Chapter. He here finisheth his judgments upon the several nations around, and in the next Chapter, we find him returning to the instruction of Israel. Before we follow him to that service, let us look back, and in a short collected point of view, ponder over those solemn judgments of the Lord determined upon the heathen.
Sin hath entered into the world, and death by sin. This is the unalterable declaration of scripture. So that whenever sin be found, death must follow: temporal death, spiritual death, eternal death, Death, (saith the same authority) passeth upon all men, because all have sinned. Hence, where-ever sin is found, unless done away in Christ, there must be indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile. Pause over the subject; and with these solemn scriptures in view, read over the whole that the Prophet hath said in this, and the many preceding Chapters, concerning the condemnation of the ungodly. Reader, may God the Holy Ghost accompany by his Almighty teaching, both your perusal, and mine, of these solemn events. And from the uniform correspondence of scripture on those momentous things may both learn awfully to reverence the striking decrees of God. Here we find the Lord speaking in the same, or similar language, by his servant the Prophet Ezekiel, as in another scripture he doth by his servant the Apostle John. Here the Lord declares, that he will cover the heaven, and make the stars thereof dark; that many people shall be amazed, and their kings shall be horribly afraid. And there the Lord saith, that the sun shall become black as sackcloth, the moon shall be as blood, and the stars of heaven shall fall upon the earth. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men; and every bond man, and every free man, shall call to the mountains and rocks to fall on them, and hide them from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. Precious, precious Lord Jesus! grant to him that reads, and to him that writes, grace to know thee in thy love, and in thy great salvation, that when the Lord shall arise to shake terribly the earth, we may be found everlastingly safe in thee, as the Lord Our Righteousness! Amen.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Eze 32:32 For I have caused my terror in the land of the living: and he shall be laid in the midst of the uncircumcised with [them that are] slain with the sword, [even] Pharaoh and all his multitude, saith the Lord GOD.
Ver. 32. For I have caused my terror. ] By Pharaoh’s exemplary punishment. This will make good men tremble at my judgments, and bad men beware how they come under my wrath.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
caused. Hebrew nathan = given: as distinct from their terror. See note on Eze 20:25.
My. Hebrew text has “His”; margin “My”.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Eze 32:27, Gen 35:5, Job 31:23, Jer 25:15-38, Zep 3:6-8, 2Co 5:11, Heb 10:31, Rev 6:15-17
Reciprocal: Isa 19:1 – Egypt Jer 9:26 – Egypt Jer 12:14 – I will Jer 25:19 – Pharaoh Jer 43:11 – he shall smite Jer 46:2 – Against Egypt Jer 46:24 – she shall Lam 1:21 – thou wilt Eze 26:20 – in the land Eze 28:26 – when I Eze 29:2 – against all Eze 32:23 – which Eze 32:26 – caused
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Eze 32:32. More than a chapter is devoted to the condemnation and predictions against Egypt, No additional fate is here made as a threat against that country. The brief statement of its doom is made to explain why the country will “be comforted at the downfall of the Zidonians.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
32:32 For I have caused my {u} terror in the land of the living: and he shall be laid in the midst of the uncircumcised with [them that are] slain with the sword, [even] Pharaoh and all his multitude, saith the Lord GOD.
(u) I will make the Egyptians afraid of me, as they caused others to fear them.