Ezekiel 32:22

32:17-32 Divers nations are mentioned as gone down to the grave before Egypt, who are ready to give her a scornful reception; these nations had been lately ruined and wasted. But though Judah and Jerusalem were about this time ruined and laid waste, yet they are not mentioned here. Though they suffered the same affliction, and by the same hand, yet the kind design for which they were afflicted, and the mercy God reserved for them, altered its nature. It was not to them a going down to the pit, as it was to the heathen. Pharaoh shall see, and be comforted; but the comfort wicked ones have after death, is poor comfort, not real, but only in fancy. The view this prophecy gives of ruined states shows something of this present world, and the empire of death in it. Come and see the calamitous state of human life. As if men did not die fast enough, they are ingenious at finding out ways to destroy one another. Also of the other world; though the destruction of nations as such, seems chiefly intended, here is plain allusion to the everlasting ruin of impenitent sinners. How are men deceived by Satan! What are the objects they pursue through scenes of bloodshed, and their many sins? Surely man disquiets himself in vain, whether he pursues wealth, fame, power, or pleasure.

Ashur is there, and all her company,.... In the state of the dead, or in a most desolate and ruinous condition; the great Assyrian monarchy, the kings of it, the princes, nobles, generals, soldiers, and the vast number of subjects in all the dominions of it; all his army, as the Targum; this, with what follows, shows who the mighty are, that should meet and address the king of Egypt at his funeral: his graves are about him; either the graves of Pharaoh and his multitude are round about the graves of the Assyrian monarch and his subjects, as Kimchi; or rather the graves of his subjects and soldiers are round about him: it seems to represent the king of Assyria as having a more stately monument, and the graves of his people as lesser ones round about him, but all in the same condition: all of them slain, fallen by the sword of their enemies, the Medes and the Babylonians, by whom the Assyrian monarchy was destroyed.

Ezekiel 32:22-23 . Asshur is there and all her company — The Assyrians, both king and people, whose destruction is represented in the foregoing chapter: though famous, warlike, and victorious, that mighty monarch fell. His graves are about him — The graves of his soldiers slain in the war. This expression, and that in the next verse, her company is round about her grave, seem to signify no more than a universal destruction of high and low, and that death had made them all equal. The masculine and feminine genders are promiscuously used in the following verses. The masculine referring to the prince, whose subjects the deceased were; the feminine to the nation or country to which they belonged. Whose graves are set in the sides of the pit — Here is supposed a spacious vault, in the midst whereof the king of Asshur lies, and round the vault, in receptacles hewn about its sides, his famous captains and commanders. And her company is round about her grave — Like lesser graves placed round the monument of some person of great quality. All of them slain, which caused terror, &c. — Who were a terror while they were alive to their neighbours.

(22) Asshur is there.— In the previous verses we have had a general picture of the fallen nations awaiting to receive Egypt as their companion; in Ezekiel 32:22-30 there follows an enumeration of the most prominent of them, with a few words about each. Some of them were not yet fallen; but in this prophetic view it is their ultimate condition which rises to the prophet’s mind. All worldly power that opposes itself to God must go down and share the judgment soon to fall on Egypt. His graves are about him.—The graves of the people are about those of their monarch. All are fallen together into one common ruin.

Verses 22, 23 - Asshur is there . The verses that follow contain, as it were, the prophet's retrospect of the history of the past, as far as he had knowledge of it. Foremost in those is Assyria, which the prophet had already chosen ( Ezekiel 31:3 ) as the pattern instance of a fallen greatness. There in the sides of the pit ( i.e. in its remotest and deepest regions) lie the graves of the rulers surrounded by those of their subjects. They had caused terror , the prophet adds, with a keen irony, in the land of the living. They can cause no terror now. Ezekiel 32:22

22, 23 . Asshur. her company ] In ref. to the other peoples “multitude” is used. The term “company” may be used of the many nationalities in the Assyrian empire, cf. Ezekiel 23:24 . his graves … him ] The gender varies as the country (fem.) or king, as representative of the people, is thought of. The ref. here is to the king. LXX. uses the mas . pron. throughout. The text here is shorter in LXX., but no difference of sense arises.

In Jeremiah 25 there is an enumeration of nations destined to be subject to the fury of the Chaldaeans. Here we find those of them who had already fallen not named by Jeremiah. Asshur is the king of Assyria, representing as usual the whole nation. The king is surrounded by the graves of his people.

Asshur, the famous, warlike, victorious kings of Assyria, is there; in the state of the dead, in the land of darkness and oblivion; and all her company; princes, captains, soldiers, subjects, and confederates. His graves are about him; perhaps his the greater, yet a grave, and they about him who were slain with him. All of them slain; some in wars, whilst the kingdom began, grew, and flourished; others, when the kingdom was destroyed; these fell by the sword. Awhile their sword was longest; at last a longer sword, that of Arbaces the Mede, with his accomplices, wounds Asshur to the heart, and he is brought to the grave.

Second strophe. - Ezekiel 32:22 . There is Asshur and all its multitude, round about it their graves, all of them slain, fallen by the sword Ezekiel 32:23 . Whose graves are made in the deepest pit, and its multitude is round about its grave; all slain, fallen by the sword, who spread terror in the land of the living. - The enumeration commences with Asshur, the world-power, which had already been overthrown by the Chaldeans. It is important to notice here, that אשּׁוּר, like עילם in Ezekiel 32:24 , and משׁך in Ezekiel 32:26 , is construed as a feminine, as המונהּ which follows in every case plainly shows. It is obvious, therefore, that the predominant idea is not that of the king or people, but that of the kingdom or world-power. It is true that in the suffixes attached to סביבותיו קברתיו in Ezekiel 32:22 , and סביבותיו in Ezekiel 32:25 and Ezekiel 32:26 , the masculine alternates with the feminine, and Hitzig therefore proposes to erase these words; but the alternation may be very simply explained, on the ground that the ideas of the kingdom and its king are not kept strictly separate, but that the words oscillate from one idea to the other. It is affirmed of Asshur, that as a world-power it lies in Sheol, and the gravers of its countrymen are round about the graves of its ruler. They all lie there as those who have fallen by the sword, i.e., who have been swept away by a judgment of God.