Egypt's punishment, a proof both of God's song-suffering and of His inexorable justice.
The punishment of Egypt by the Assyrian conquest, on which the prophet enlarges in this chapter, may be regarded in a double light.
I. AS STRONGLY EXHIBITING THE LONG-SUFFERING AND MERCY OF GOD.
1. Consider the long persistence of Egypt in sins of various kinds—idolatry, king-worship, practice of magic, kidnapping of slaves, cruel usage of captives, impurity, indecency; consider that her monarchy had lasted at least sixteen hundred years, and that both in religion and in morals she had continually grown worse.
2. Bear in mind her treatment of God's people—how she had first oppressed them (Exodus 1:8-14), then endeavored to exterminate them (Exodus 1:15-22); this failing, made their bondage harder (Exodus 5:6-19); repeatedly refused to let them go; sought to destroy them at the Red Sea (Exodus 15:9); plundered them in the time of Rehoboam (1 Kings 14:25, 1 Kings 14:26); alternately encouraged and deserted them in their struggles against Assyria (1 Kings 17:4; 1 Kings 18:21, 1 Kings 18:24).
3. Note also that she had helped to corrupt God's people. In Egypt many Israelites had worshipped the Egyptian gods (Joshua 24:14; Ezekiel 20:8). They had brought from Egypt an addiction to magical practices which had never left them. Manasseh, in calling his eldest son "Amon," intended to acknowledge the Egyptian god of that name. Under these circumstances, it is marvelous that Egypt had been allowed to exist so long, and, on the whole, to flourish; and the marvel can only be accounted for by the extreme long-suffering and extraordinary mercy of Almighty God.
II. AS A DECISIVE PROOF OF GOD'S INEXORABLE JUSTICE. However long God defers the punishment of sin, it comes at last with absolute certainty. It might have seemed as if the hardships suffered by his people in Egypt had escaped God's recollection, so many years was it since they had happened. It might have seemed as if all Egypt's old sins were condoned—as if she was to escape unpunished. Sixteen centuries of empire! Why, Rome herself, the "iron kingdom," that "broke in pieces and bruised" all things (Daniel 2:4), was not allowed more than twelve centuries of existence. But Egypt was allowed a far longer term, not only of existence, but of prosperity. Since the time of the shepherd-kings, four hundred years before the Exodus, she had suffered no great calamity. Even the Ethiopians had not been so much foreign conquerors, as princes connected by blood and identical in religion, who claimed the crown by right of descent from former Egyptian sovereigns. But God had all the time been waiting, with his eye upon the sinful nation, counting her offences, remembering them against her, and bent on taking vengeance. And the vengeance, when it came, was severe. First, internal discord and civil war—"kingdom against kingdom, and city against city" (verse 2); then conquest by an alien nation—conquest effected by at least three distinct expeditions, in which the whole land was overrun, the cities taken and plundered, and army after army slaughtered; finally, subjection to a "fierce king," a "cruel lord" (verse 4). And the sufferings of war aggravated, apparently, by the natural calamity of a great drought—a failure of the inundation either for one year, or possibly for several (verses 5-8). Truly, when the day of vengeance came, Egypt was afflicted indeed! No wonder she "was afraid, and feared because of the shaking of the hand of the Lord of hosts" (verse 16). It is, indeed, "a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 10:31).