In that day will I cause the horn of the house of Israel to bud forth, and I will give thee the opening of the mouth in the midst of them; and they shall know that I am the LORD.
In that day will I cause the horn of the house of Israel to bud forth. In the evil only, not in the good, was Egypt to be parallel to Israel. The very downfall of will be the signal for the rise of Israel, because of God's covenant with the latter.
I cause the horn of ... Israel to bud - (Psalms 132:17). I will cause its ancient glory to revive: an earnest of Israel's full glory under Messiah, the son of David (Luke 1:69). Even in Babylon and Medo- Persia an earnest was given of this in Daniel raised to be the first of the three presidents over the whole Medo-Persian empire (Daniel 6:2), and Jechoniah lifted up by Evil-Merodach above all the kings with him in Babylon (Jeremiah 52:31).
I will give thee the opening of the mouth in the midst of them. When thy predictions shall have come to pass, thy words henceforth shall be more heeded (cf. Ezekiel 24:27).
Remarks:
(1) Egypt was of old the enemy of Israel, and more recently the seducer of the elect nation into idolatry and estrangement from God. Therefore God declares by Ezekiel to the Egyptian king, "Behold I am against thee" (Ezekiel 29:3). God is against all who injure His people, whether by oppression or by seduction, and sooner or later will severely punish them: for it is written as to the people of God, "He that toucheth you, toucheth the apple of His eye" (Zechariah 2:8).
(2) Overweening self-sufficiency was the characteristic sin of the then-reigning King of Egypt. Proud of his successes for five and twenty years, Pharaoh-hophra had in blasphemous presumption said that not even a god could deprive him of his kingdom. Resting in haughty security on the abundant resources which Egypt derived from the fertilizing powers of the Nile, Pharaoh said within himself, as though he were the Deity, "My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself" (Ezekiel 29:3; Ezekiel 29:9). Thus, carnal minds in prosperity attribute the glory of their possessions to themselves, and forget that all which we have we owe to God, and to God we ought to consecrate all that we possess and all that we are.
(3) God taught Pharaoh by destroying judgments to unlearn his presumptuous confidence in his own inviolable security. The retribution inflicted on him was one in kind. As of old a former Pharaoh had pursued after Israel, saying, "The wilderness hath shut them in" (Exodus 14:3), so Egypt was herself to be brought into a wilderness-state of 40 years, like the similar period of Israel's sojourn in the wilderness (Ezekiel 29:11-12), and her sons' carcasses were to be for meat to all beasts and fowls (Ezekiel 29:5). The Egyptians themselves thus should know to their cost the power and justice of the God of Israel (Ezekiel 29:6). All who hurt or tempt the people of God shall suffer for it in the end.
(4) Israel, too, was taught to perceive the folly and sin of her past dependence on Egypt, which had proved to her but a staff of reed. At the time of the Jews' greatest need, when they were besieged by Nebuchadnezzar, from whom they had revolted, in reliance on the promises of Egypt, the expectation of deliverance from that quarter proved an utter disappointment: the reed which they leant upon with their whole weight snapped asunder, and rent their shoulder fatally (Ezekiel 29:7). Thus they who make flesh their arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord, always find their hope disappointed in the hour of their sorest need. God at once, in justice, as also in wisdom and mercy to His people, breaks every creature-confidence on which His people in sinful folly lean, in order that henceforth they may rest wholly on the Lord.
(5) Yet even for Egypt God had mercy in store after judgment (Ezekiel 29:14). "He will not always chide: neither will He keep His anger forever" (Psalms 104:9). But Egypt was henceforth to be but "a base kingdom" (Ezekiel 29:14-15). She was no more to have that power and eminence whereby Israel was tempted to look to her for protection, and so to conform to her corrupt ways (Ezekiel 29:16). We may truly bless God when He destroys all our cherished idols, and thereby draws us into closer communion with Himself.
(6) God will never suffer Himself to remain in debt to any man. Even a pagan Nebuchadnezzar, when he had executed God's will, and performed the "service" which God required against Tyre, was not allowed to go unrequited, inasmuch as he "wrought for the Lord" (Ezekiel 29:18-20).
(7) Israel was to rise on the fall of Egypt, because of the everlasting covenant which God made with His elect people (Ezekiel 29:21). God "caused the horn of Israel to bud forth" after the 70 years of depression and captivity. Herein God fulfilled in part His promise in Psalms 132:17, "I will make the horn of David to bud." The fuller accomplishment of this word took place when He "raised up a horn of salvation for His people in the house of His servant David" (Luke 1:69), in the first coming of Messiah the Saviour. The fullest accomplishment shall be when Messiah shall come again in glory as the universally recognized King of the Jews, and when His ancient people, as well as all His saints, shall hail Him, saying, "Hosanna! blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord! Blessed be the kingdom of our father David, that cometh in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!" (Mark 11:9-10.)