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¹ In the tenth year, in the tenth month, on the twelfth day of the month, the word of the Lord came to me, saying,² Son of man, let your face be turned against Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and be a prophet against him and against all Egypt:³ Say to them, These are the words of the Lord: See, I am against you, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great river-beast stretched out among his Nile streams, who has said, The Nile is mine, and I have made it for myself.⁴ And I will put hooks in your mouth, and the fish of your streams will be hanging from your skin; and I will make you come up out of your streams, with all the fish of your streams hanging from your skin.⁵ And I will let you be in the waste land, you and all the fish of your streams: you will go down on the face of the land; you will not be taken up or put to rest in the earth; I have given you for food to the beasts of the field and the birds of the heaven.⁶ And it will be clear to all the people of Egypt that I am the Lord, because you have been a false support to the children of Israel.⁷ When they took a grip of you in their hands, you were crushed so that their arms were broken: and when they put their weight on you for support, you were broken and all their muscles gave way.

⁸ For this cause the Lord has said: See, I am sending a sword on you, cutting off from you man and beast.⁹ And the land of Egypt will be an unpeopled waste; and they will be certain that I am the Lord: because he has said, The Nile is mine, and I made it.¹⁰ See, then, I am against you and against your streams, and I will make the land of Egypt an unpeopled waste, from Migdol to Syene, even as far as the edge of Ethiopia.¹¹ No foot of man will go through it and no foot of beast, and it will be unpeopled for forty years.¹² I will make the land of Egypt a waste among the countries which are made waste, and her towns will be unpeopled among the towns which have been made waste, for forty years: and I will send the Egyptians in flight among the nations and wandering through the countries.¹³ For this is what the Lord has said: At the end of forty years I will get the Egyptians together from the peoples where they have gone in flight:¹⁴ I will let the fate of Egypt be changed, and will make them come back into the land of Pathros, into the land from which they came; and there they will be an unimportant kingdom.¹⁵ It will be the lowest of the kingdoms, and never again will it be lifted up over the nations: I will make them small, so that they may not have rule over the nations.¹⁶ And Egypt will no longer be the hope of the children of Israel, causing sin to come to mind when their eyes are turned to them: and they will be certain that I am the Lord.

¹⁷ Now in the twenty-seventh year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the word of the Lord came to me, saying,¹⁸ Son of man, Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon, made his army do hard work against Tyre, and the hair came off every head and every arm was rubbed smooth: but he and his army got no payment out of Tyre for the hard work which he had done against it.¹⁹ For this cause the Lord has said: See, I am giving the land of Egypt to Nebuchadrezzar, king of Babylon: he will take away her wealth, and take her goods by force and everything which is there; and this will be the payment for his army.²⁰ I have given him the land of Egypt as the reward for his hard work, because they were working for me, says the Lord.²¹ In that day I will make a horn put out buds for the children of Israel, and I will let your words come freely among them, and they will be certain that I am the Lord.