Behold, therefore I am against thee, and against thy rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the tower of Syene even unto the border of Ethiopia.
I will make the land of Egypt utterly waste and desolate, from the tower of Syene. Grotius translates, 'from Migdol (a fortress near Pelusium, on the north of Suez) to Syene' (in the farthest south) - i:e., from one end of Egypt to the other. So in Ezekiel 30:6, margin. However, the English version rightly refers Syene to Seveneh - i:e., Sebennytus, in the Eastern Delta of the Nile, the capital of the Lower Egyptian kings. The Sebennyte Pharaohs, with the help of the Canaanites, who, as shepherds or merchants, ranged the desert of Suez, extended their borders beyond the narrow province east of the Delta, to which they had been confined by the Pharaohs of Upper Egypt. The defeated party, in derision, named the Sebennyte or Lower Egyptians foreigners and shepherd kings (a shepherd being an abomination in Egypt, Genesis 46:34). They were really a native dynasty. Thus, in the English version, "Ethiopia" in the extreme south is rightly contrasted with Sebennytus or Syene in the north.