Ezekiel 29:10 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

I am against thee: see Ezekiel 28:22. Thy rivers: see Ezekiel 29:4. Waste: see Ezekiel 29:9. The tower; thus, as a common name, we, and the French, and others read it; but some account it a proper name of a town or city, called Magdalum, for aught I know the old Migdol, Exodus 14:2 Numbers 33:7,8; it was on the Red Sea side, north-east of Egypt: from this part unto Syene. Syene; a city on the east of Nilus over against Arabia, saith one; a city that is just below the great cataract or fall of Nilus toward Ethiopia, and such a boundary between Ethiopia and Egypt as admits dispute to which it belongs. Ethiopia: now, to dispute nothing of this geography, it seems likely to me, that what we render Ethiopia is not so well and plainly rendered; for Syene being so near to Ethiopia, we must look some place of Egypt at some greater distance from Syene than this Ethiopia is; if then it were translated, the border of Cush, to whom Moses assigns Arabia, Genesis 10:7. Let us suppose then Magdalum, instead of the tower, as one term; Syene on the edge of Ethiopia, as another; and the opposite point on the Red Sea towards Arabia; and then almost all Egypt is comprised herein, from north-east to south-east, down the Red Sea, thence to the westward as far as Ethiopia, and thence up the Nile as high northward as Magdalum.