THE CAPTIVITY OF EGYPT

Much of the attention, within both the Messianic Community and the Christian Church, is focused on the imminent return of Yeshua and the setting up of His Kingdom as the next big event on the prophetic calendar. Most of those promoting this idea had their focus on the year two thousand, until it became obvious that they were wrong about Yeshua returning then. The idea that our L-RD could return at any moment is a basic teaching of most of the true believers in Yeshua, Jew and Gentile alike. Let us consider the reason for this belief and the validity of this teaching in light of what the Tanakh, or Bible, has to say.

First, let us consider the foundational belief upon which all else that they are teaching rests. That is the idea that there are no further prophecies found in the scriptures to be fulfilled before the coming of Yeshua. If we can find one prophecy that has yet to be fulfilled their whole premise of Yeshua returning 'any minute' is exposed as error. Is there such a yet-to-be-fulfilled prophecy to be found in Holy Writ? I believe that I can show you more than just one, but let us consider the one that I think is the most obvious one to be found in Scripture, the captivity of Egypt.

We find this future trial of Egypt laid out for us by the prophet Ezekiel. "Son of man, set thy face against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and prophesy against him, and against all Egypt: Speak, and say, Thus saith the L-rd G-D; Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself. But I will put hooks in thy jaws, and I will cause the fish of thy rivers to stick unto thy scales, and I will bring thee up out of the midst of thy rivers, and all the fish of thy rivers shall stick unto thy scales. And I will leave thee thrown into the wilderness, thee and all the fish of thy rivers: thou shalt fall upon the open fields; thou shalt not be brought together, nor gathered: I have given thee of meat to the beasts of the field and to the fowls of the heaven. And all the inhabitants of Egypt shall know that I am the L-RD, because they have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel. When they took hold of thee by thy hand, thou didst break, and rend all their shoulder: and when they leaned upon thee, thou brakest, and madest all their loins to be at a stand. Therefore thus saith the L-rd G-D; Behold, I will bring a sword upon thee, and cut off man and beast out of thee. And the land of Egypt shall be desolate and waste; and they shall know that I am the L-rd: because he hath said, The river is mine, and I have made it." (Ezekiel 29:2-9).

Let me stop here and explain how this passage is interpreted traditionally. This prophecy was made by Ezekiel just before the final fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar. Judah had appealed to Egypt to come to her aid to lift the siege that the Babylonians had raised against it. Ezekiel is saying that though Egypt will come to Judah's aid, it will only lead to Egypt's own downfall at the hands of the Babylonians. After their defeat, Egypt, like Judah, experienced captivity imposed on them by Nebuchadnezzar, in that some of their people were removed from the land, but by no mean all of them. This lasted for more or less forty years. This according to most biblical scholars, constitutes the complete fulfillment of the prophecy.

However, it is a well-known principle among all students of biblical prophecy, that most prophecies of the great prophets, contain both an immediate future and a far distant future fulfillment. It is as when you stand looking at a distant mountain range and you see two mountains, which from your vantage point seem to be right next to each other, but in reality are quite far apart. So it is many times when the prophet is viewing the future, as in this case with the Prophet Ezekiel viewing the future of Egypt. He saw the immediate defeat of Egypt by Babylon, but he also saw a more distant future. How do we know that this is the case in this instance? We know because some of what Ezekial prophesied did not fit with what actually happened during the times of the Babylonian defeat of Egypt, which we shall discover as we read the rest of the prophecy.

"Therefore thus saith the L-rd G-D; Behold, I will bring a sword upon thee, and cut off man and beast out of thee. And the land of Egypt shall be desolate and waste; and they shall know that I am the L-RD: because he hath said, The river is mine, and I have made it. Behold, therefore I am against thee, and against thy rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the tower of Syene, [ located on the Med. coast], even unto the border of Ethiopia. No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited forty years. And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years: and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries. Yet thus saith the L-rd G-D; At the end of forty years will I gather the Egyptians from the people whither they were scattered: And I will bring again the land of Pathros, into the land of their habitation; and they shall be there a base kingdom. It shall be the basest of the kingdoms; neither shall it exalt itself any more above the nations: for I will diminish them, that they shall no more rule over the nations." (Ezekiel 29:8 - 15).

Notice that the prophet declares that the land of Egypt will be left desolate amongst her neighbors which also experience some desolation. Most authorities contend that this desolation is not to be taken literally, but speaks only of Egypt's loss of political power. However there is nothing in the Scriptures to indicate that this desolation is to be taken as anything but literal. In fact, the Scripture goes on to say that for these forty years neither man nor beast shall set foot in the land of Egypt. While man observes political boundaries, animals do not.

Therefore, the Scripture here can only be speaking of a devastation of the land of Egypt, so awful that even animals will stay clear of it for forty years. The plain fact of the matter is that the land of Egypt has been continually occupied, by both man and beast, from earliest recorded history until this very day.

Moreover, the Scriptures go on to say that from the time of this devastation, Egypt shall never again rule over other nations, although it will itself remain a nation, even the basest of nations. In other words, Egypt would never again rule an empire nor even be a world power again.

Since the time of Egypt's defeat at the hands of the Babylonians, Egypt has often been a world power in history. She was such a power in the days of the Roman Empire, long after the fall of the Babylonians. She was not only a world power in the days of the Crusades, but under the leadership of Salah al-Din (Saladin), defeated the combined armies of Europe in the Holy Lands at the end of the 12th century. The Ayyubid dynasty, founded by Salah al-Din, ruled an Empire that included not only Egypt, but Syria and much of western Arabia until the middle of the 13th century.

Even in our own times Egypt has played a role as a world power. Under Nassar Egypt defied the British Empire and wrested the control of the Suez Canal from them. Egypt has been a leader in the military campaigns of the Muslims against Israel, and is considered one of the great military powers in the Middle East. Thus it is clear that Egypt is not now the base kingdom spoken of in the prophecy of Ezekiel. It follows therefore, that she has yet to experience the devastation spoken of by him. If Egypt has not yet experienced the desolation foretold by the Scripture for her, (and any credible student of world history will tell you that it has not), then there are at least forty years of history left before the L-RD's return.

Some Bible teachers, recognizing what I have just pointed out, say that this devastation of Egypt is to occur after the return of the L-RD. They say that this destruction is part of the punishment visited upon Egypt for not coming to Jerusalem to keep Sukkot, or the Feast of Tabernacles, after the L-RD's return, as required by Zec14:18-19. However the punishment imposed on Egypt that she would no longer rule over other nations, implies that other nations could have such rule. Yet, after Yeshua's return, no one but He can have rule over the nations. Therefore, this punishment of Egypt has to come before Yeshua's return, not after.

Another thing to consider here is the bragging that the L-RD accuses Egypt of in that they claim ownership of the Nile river based on the fact that they created it. It was only after the completion of the Aswan Dam project that such a claim could have any basis in fact. The Aswan Dam project harnessed the Nile for power, rerouted it, and ended its uncontrolled flooding. Only now could it truly be said that the Egyptians have 'created' the Nile.

Another thing that I would like you to consider is why, out of all the nations, should Hashem visit such a punishment on Egypt only? Why not Babylon, or Assyria, or their modern equivalents? Surely they have visited great evil on the Jewish people in times past, and their descendants still do. I think that you will find the answer in how well Hashem balances His books.

While it is true that Egypt enslaved the Jews and subjected them to much torment, in my opinion, their greatest sin against the Children of Israel was that they corrupted their religious thinking. The Jews did not even know the name of their G-D, let alone what He looked like.

Therefore, many, if not most of them, choose their favorite Egyptian god to represent their own. The proof of this is that first of the plagues of Egypt also effected the Jews. It was not until the plague of the flies that Hashem made a distinction between the Jews and the Egyptians. Some of the Rabbi's say that none of the plagues of Egypt ever touched the Jews, but that is not supported by the Scriptures. The first of the plagues were duplicated by the Egyptian magicians. It wasn't until the plague of lice that they could not do so. The purpose of Hashem was to show both the Egyptians and the Jews that the Egyptians gods were false gods. When the magicians duplicated the first of the plagues, you can be sure that they at least, did not spare the Jews. When they could not reproduce the plague of lice it convinced them that Moses was bringing forth the works of Hashem. It also convinced the children of Israel and it was only after that, that the plagues no longer affected the Jews as well as the Egyptians.

However, this was not the end of the religious influence of the Egyptians over the children of Israel. The children of Israel never quite lost their belief that there were other gods than the G-D of Israel. What they learned from the humiliation of Egypt was that theirs was the stronger G-D, not the only one. It was the ghost of this belief that caused the spies to bring back a bad report of the Promised Land and lead to their forty years of wandering in the wilderness. You might ask me how I can claim this? My answer is that although they had just witnessed the power of Hashem over the Egyptians and their gods, their actions made it clear that they had not learned that Hashem was the only G-D, nor that He had all power both in heaven and in earth.

The thinking in those days was that there were many gods and some had more power than others. It was also thought that those gods had more power in the lands where they had originated than in others. This was the reason that the people that were brought into Samaria, to replace the people of the northern kingdom of Israel after their captivity, started trying to worship the G-D that the Jews had worshipped. It was a corrupted worship and that is why they were despised and rejected by the Jews of Yeshua's day.

The bottom line is that if the ten spies that brought the bad report had thought that Hashem was the True and only G-D they would not have doubted His ability to deliver the inhabitants of the land into their hands. The fact that they did not is proof that they had not yet divorced themselves from the idea that others gods existed. Only Joshua and Caleb, (who is thought by some to have come from a Gentile background), truly believed in the one true G-D. Thus, in a very large measure, it was the religious thinking instilled in the children of Israel by the Egyptians, that led to Israel's forty years of wandering in the wilderness. I believe that this is the reason that this punishment is visited on Egypt and not on some other nation of the world. Is it not a fitting punishment that Egypt would be made to wander among the nations for forty years, even as Israel wandered for forty years in the widerness?

I believe that I have now proven that the desolation of Egypt and the wandering of her people among the nations for forty years is something that beyond doubt, is going to happen before the return of Yeshua. Can you comprehend what a tremendous event this will be in the history of the world? Can you not see what an awesome witness of the truth of G-D's word, the foretelling of the Scripture of this happening could be to an unbelieving world? Yet the body of Messiah, as a whole, has leaned to their own understanding to explain away this event instead of just believing what has been written. This is, in my opinion, the greatest error to be found in the Body of Messiah today. That is that many believe in G-D, but few believe G-d. It is my prayer that this would soon change and I say, Amen.