Verse 8. -
Behold, I will bring a sword upon thee. The words are probably addressed to the nation personified rather than to the king. The sentence of doom is now pronounced, no longer figuratively. And the special guilt for which it was inflicted, a guilt which the nation shared with its ruler, is emphatically repeated in Ver. 9.
29:1-16 Worldly, carnal minds pride themselves in their property, forgetting that whatever we have, we received it from God, and should use it for God. Why, then, do we boast? Self is the great idol which all the world worships, in contempt of God and his sovereignty. God can force men out of that in which they are most secure and easy. Such a one, and all that cleave to him, shall perish together. Thus end men's pride, presumption, and carnal security. The Lord is against those who do harm to his people, and still more against those who lead them into sin. Egypt shall be a kingdom again, but it shall be the basest of the kingdoms; it shall have little wealth and power. History shows the complete fulfilment of this prophecy. God, not only in justice, but in wisdom and goodness to us, breaks the creature-stays on which we lean, that they may be no more our confidence.
Therefore thus saith the Lord God,.... Because of the pride of the king of Egypt, asserting the river to be his own, and made by him for himself; and because of his perfidy to the house of Israel:
behold, I will bring a sword upon thee; or those that kill with the sword, as the Targum; first a cival war, occasioned by the murmurs of the people, on account of the defeat of their army at Cyrene; which issued in the dethroning and strangling of this king, as before observed and setting up another; which cival commotions Nebuchadnezzar took the advantage of, and came against Egypt with a large army:
and cut off man and beast out of thee; for what with the civil wars among themselves, and what with the devastations of the king of Babylon's army, putting men to the sword, and seizing upon the beasts for their food, to support such an army in a foreign land, it was pretty well stripped of both.
