Ezekiel 29:8

"Therefore thus saith the Lord Jehovah: behold, I will bring a sword upon thee, and will cut off from thee man and beast. And the land of Egypt shall be a desolation and a waste; and they shall know that I am Jehovah. Because he hath said the river is mine, and I have made it; therefore, behold, I am against thee, and against thy rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt an utter waste and desolation, from the tower of Seveneh, 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 a desolation in the midst of the countries that are desolate; and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be a desolation for forty years; and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries."

THE ALLEGORY APPLIED

"I will bring a sword upon thee ..." (Ezekiel 29:8). This was the sword of Nebuchadnezzar, identified in Ezekiel 29:17, below.

"A desolation for forty years ..." (Ezekiel 29:11,12). This is the big problem in this prophecy, because nearly all of the scholars seem very sure that there was never such a long period of desolation in the whole history of Egypt. However, there is too much that men do not know about the history of those times to allow very much dependence to be put in such opinions. Nebuchadnezzar did indeed capture Egypt, following the fall of Tyre; and if what that ruthless ruler did to Jerusalem is any gauge of what he probably did to Egypt, we may be very sure that Ezekiel's prophecy was no exaggeration. Our inability to prove just exactly what all that desolation was cannot in any manner detract from the most circumstantial and accurate fulfillment of that later promise in this same prophecy regarding the perpetual place of Egypt throughout following history, in which the perpetual mediocrity of the nation was foretold. Our argument is that this portion of the prophecy alone proves the divine inspiration of the whole prophecy, and the believer should have no problem with trusting God for the fulfillment of the rest of it, whether or not, modern commentators know all about it.