^29:8“ ‘Therefore, this is what the sovereign Lord says: Look, I am about to bring a sword against you, and I will kill¹¹ every person and every animal. ^29:9The land of Egypt will become a desolate ruin. Then they will know that I am the Lord.

Because he said, “The Nile is mine and I made it,” ^29:10I am against¹² you and your waterways. I will turn the land of Egypt into an utter desolate ruin from Migdol¹³ to Syene,¹⁴ as far as the border with Ethiopia. ^29:11No human foot will pass through it, and no animal’s foot will pass through it; it will be uninhabited for forty years. ^29:12I will turn the land of Egypt into a desolation in the midst of desolate lands; for forty years her cities will lie desolate in the midst of ruined cities. I will scatter Egypt among the nations and disperse them among foreign countries.

^29:13“ ‘For this is what the sovereign Lord says: At the end of forty years¹⁵ I will gather Egypt from the peoples where they were scattered. ^29:14I will restore the fortunes of Egypt, and will bring them back¹⁶ to the land of Pathros, to the land of their origin; there they will be an insignificant kingdom.

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Footnotes

11 Heb “I will cut off from you.”
12 Or “I challenge you.” The phrase “I am against you” may be a formula for challenging someone to combat or a duel. See D. I. Block, Ezekiel (), 1:, and P. Humbert, “Die Herausforderungsformel ‘hinnenî êlêkâ,’ ” 45 (1933): 101–8.
13 This may refer to a site in the Egyptian Delta which served as a refuge for Jews (Jer 44:1; 46:14).
14 Syene is known today as Aswan.
15 In Ezek 4:4–8 it was said that the house of Judah would suffer forty years.
16 Thus the Masoretic Text. The , , and translate as though the Hebrew read “cause to inhabit.”