Year 9, Day 155: Ezekiel 29

Theological Commentary: Click Here

It is easy, especially in today’s Christianity, to think that the Old Testament is about God and the Hebrew people.  In that, I mean to exclude the rest of the world.  It is remarkably easy to listen to preachers and hear the popular passages and think that God wanted the Hebrew people to thrive and be exalted while the rest of the nations were to be diminished.  It is easy to think that God didn’t start caring about the Gentiles until Jesus came around and changed things with His death.

I think this perspective is absolutely wrong.  Yes, God did care about the Hebrew people.  The Old Testament is God’s story about His relationship with Abraham and his descendants.  The story is primarily focused upon the Hebrew people and their ability – or lack of ability – to obey the Lord and walk with Him.  However, that doesn’t exclude God’s relationship with the other nations.  The Hebrew people were supposed to be the shining example, the star pupil.  But they weren’t inherently better than everyone else.

For example, didn’t we just spend three days listening to God lament that the Phoenician people got it wrong and needed to be taught a lesson?  Now we are going to listen to God say similar things to Egypt.  Egypt of all people!  These are the people who oppressed the Hebrew people.  This is the home of Pharaoh, the nemesis of God.  Can I possibly claim that God is mourning the need to bring Egypt to heel, too?

I can, and I am.  Yes, in this chapter God calls Egypt the great dragon, and the Bible is full of places where the dragon is lifted up as God’s nemesis.  But look past those words.  Look at the end.  Where does God leave Egypt?  He could have left Egypt in destruction, erased from the annuls of history by the Babylonians.  He doesn’t, though.  He promises to bring them back together and to restore them as a nation.  Maybe not a great nation, but they will be restored to a nation nonetheless.

What is it that Egypt did that was so offensive to God?  In one case, they share a human flaw with the Phoenicians.  They think too highly of themselves.  In their pride, they forget God.  They think their great civilization was built by their hands.

In another case, they have something else to bring that the Phoenicians did not do.  God is holding Egypt responsible for promising help and not being able to deliver upon it.  God calls them a staff of reed.  In other places in the prophets God calls Egypt a staff that breaks and splinters in the hands of the Hebrew people.  They promise help but so often they actually cause more trouble than would have happened had they stayed out of things.  God resents that the pride of Egypt is so great that they think they can save other people, too.

I think this is a powerful lesson to learn, especially for those with an eye towards their neighbor.  God wants us to be neighborly and hospitable.  However, we should be neighborly to introduce them to God and to bring the love of God into their life.  We cannot save other people; we shouldn’t be working with others to convince them of our own greatness!  We are to be a part of God’s plan, not striving to accomplish our own purposes.

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