Reading: Ezekiel 28-30, Psalm 39

So there is this country in the ancient world that had a long, storied history. It was generally very powerful on the world stage, was naturally defended from invasion by a geographic features, and had enormous reserves of important natural resources for the time. It was populous and technologically advanced. Sound like any countries you know of in the modern world?

I don’t often make direct comparisons between present world affairs and the text of the Bible. There are so many barriers between then and now. Our world is very different than the ancient near eastern world that the Hebrew Scriptures have as their setting. Culture, technology, language, the impact of two thousand years of Christianity. But one thing has not changed, and that is the natural tendencies of the human heart. And the world in which we live, and the nation in which I live, has a heart very much like that of ancient Egypt.

The condemnation against Egypt is framed around a very noteworthy complaint: Because you said, “The Nile is mine, and I made it…” The Nile river was the center of Egypt in almost every way. It was the economic strength of the nation, it was the primary artifact of their religious practice and belief, it was a natural defense, it was a means of transportation. The list could go on. The importance of ancient nations is directly related to their access to water and transport, and Egypt was built around one of the largest rivers on Earth. It is very astute of the Egyptians to understand that their power and wealth was tied to the Nile. But they went rather beyond recognizing the importance of what they had. They began to see what they had as the result of their own work. We have these advantages because we created them. The Nile is ours, and we made it.

It is a strange thing, but I have found that it is very difficult to accept good fortune. We humans would rather believe that we have what we have because we either deserve or earned it. The reality, of course, is that everything we have, we have been given. For those of us who believe the story told by Scripture to be the true story, that is the very beginning of the story. God makes everything, including us. We literally have nothing we have not been given. The whole human problem starts when the humans see something they have not been given and take it anyway, launching the human independence project that has been going so well ever since. The lesson for Egypt was one in humility. Understand that the Nile, and all the other things that you have, come from the creator God. What will happen then? God has the same kind of promise for Egypt that he makes for Israel! He will gather the exiled Egyptians from all the nations they have been scattered and restore their fortunes. Who saw that coming? Egypt, which during the books of Moses is pretty much the worst place ever, ruled by Pharaoh, the worst guy ever, will benefit from the same kind of restorative action on God’s part as the people of Israel. It’s almost like God cares about all the nations, not just the one you or I happen to belong to.

This little series on Egypt is not the only thing in today’s reading. We also have a discussion of Tyre and Sidon, but the themes are largely the same. Tyre took pride in it’s position on the Mediterranean Sea and it’s wealth, claiming they were their own work. All the nations made false gods of their resources- the Egyptians of the Nile and it’s various inhabitants, Tyre and Sidon of animals and the sea itself. They both laid claim to having provided for themselves and created means to secure future fortune by appeasing the gods. The shared trait among them all is losing sight of the creator God. I find it worthwhile to consider how this pattern continues throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and the story of human history that precedes and follows it. We humans lose sight of the creator, take what is not given to us, and then lay claim to what has been given to us as our own doing. Ezekiel points out that this never ends particularly well. We might do well to remember that today.