Ezekiel 29:14,15 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

And I will bring again the captivity of Egypt This captivity of the Egyptians, though not taken notice of by Herodotus, is mentioned by Berosus, in one of the fragments of his history, quoted by Josephus, Antiq., 50. 10. chap. 11, and published with notes by Scaliger, at the end of his books, De Emendatione Temporum, whose remark upon the place is very observable, namely, “The calamities that befell the Egyptians are passed over by Herodotus, because the Egyptian priests would not inform him of any thing that tended to the disgrace of their nation.” And I will cause them to return into the land of Pathros That part of Egypt which is called Thebais, as Bochart proves by several arguments. And they shall be there a base kingdom, the basest of kingdoms “By base kingdom is meant, that it should be tributary and subject to strangers, for the much greatest part of the time. This is the purport and meaning of the prophecy; and the truth will appear by a short deduction of the history of Egypt from that time to this. It was first of all tributary to the Babylonians under Amasis; upon the ruin of the Babylonish empire, it was subject to the Persians; upon the failure of the Persian empire, it came into the hands of the Macedonians; after the Macedonians, it fell under the dominion of the Romans; after the division of the Roman empire, it was subdued by the Saracens, in the reign of Omar, their third emperor; about the year of Christ 1250, it was in the possession of the Mamelukes, a word which signifies a slave bought with money, but is appropriated to those Turkish or Circassian slaves, whom the sultans of Egypt bought young, and taught military exercises. These slaves usurped the royal authority, and by that means Egypt became their prey. But, A.D. 1517, Selim, the ninth emperor of the Turks, conquered the Mamelukes, and annexed Egypt to the Ottoman empire, of which it continues to be a province to this day. By this deduction it appears, that the truth of Ezekiel's prediction is fully attested by the whole series of the history of Egypt, from that time to the present. And who could pretend to say, upon human conjecture, that so great a kingdom, so rich and fertile a country, should ever afterward become tributary and subject to strangers? It is now a great deal above two thousand years since this prophecy was first delivered; and what likelihood or appearance was there, that the Egyptians should, for so many ages, bow under a foreign yoke, and never, in all that time, be able to recover their liberties, and have a prince of their own to reign over them? But as is the prophecy, so is the event.” Bishop Newton.