3. Say that this is what the Sovereign Lord is telling the king of Egypt: I am your enemy, you monster crocodile, lying in the river. You say that the Nile is yours and that you made it.
4. I am going to put a hook through your jaw and make the fish in your river stick fast to you. Then I will pull you up out of the Nile, with all the fish sticking to you.
5. I will throw you and all those fish into the desert. Your body will fall on the ground and be left unburied. I will give it to the birds and animals for food.
6. Then all the people of Egypt will know that I am the Lord.”The Lord says, “The Israelites relied on you Egyptians for support, but you were no better than a weak stick.
7. When they leaned on you, you broke, pierced their armpits, and made them wrench their backs.
8. Now then, I, the Sovereign Lord, am telling you that I will get troops to attack you with swords, and they will kill your people and your animals.
9. Egypt will become an empty waste. Then you will know that I am the Lord.“Because you said that the Nile is yours and you made it,
10. I am your enemy and the enemy of your Nile. I will make all of Egypt an empty waste, from the city of Migdol in the north to the city of Aswan in the south, all the way to the Ethiopian border.
11. No human being or animal will walk through it. For forty years nothing will live there.
12. I will make Egypt the most desolate country in the world. For forty years the cities of Egypt will lie in ruins, ruins worse than those of any other city. I will make the Egyptians refugees. They will flee to every country and live among other peoples.”
13. The Sovereign Lord says, “After forty years I will bring the Egyptians back from the nations where I have scattered them,