1. Ten years after King Jehoiachin and the rest of us had been led away as prisoners to Babylonia, the Lord spoke to me on the twelfth day of the tenth month. He said:
2. Ezekiel, son of man, condemn the king of Egypt. Tell him and his people
3. that I am saying:King of Egypt, you were like a giant crocodile lying in a river. You acted as though you owned the Nile and made it for yourself. But now I, the Lord God, am your enemy!
4. I will put a hook in your jaw and pull you out of the water, and all the fish in your river will stick to your scaly body.
5. I'll throw you and the fish into the desert, and your body will fall on the hard ground. You will be left unburied, and wild animals and birds will eat your flesh.
6. Then everyone in Egypt will know that I am the Lord.You and your nation refused to help the people of Israel and were nothing more than a broken stick.
7. When they reached out to you for support, you broke in half, cutting their arms and making them fall.
8. So I, the Lord God, will send troops to attack you, king of Egypt. They will kill your people and livestock,
9. until your land is a barren desert. Then you will know that I have done these things.You claimed that you made the River Nile and control it.
10. Now I am turning against you and your river. Your nation will be nothing but an empty wasteland all the way from the town of Migdol in the north to Aswan in the south, and as far as the border of Ethiopia.
11. No human or animal will even dare travel through Egypt, because no sign of life will be found there for forty years.
12. It will be the most barren place on earth. Every city in Egypt will lie in ruins during those forty years, and I will scatter your people throughout the nations of the world.