No foot of man shall pass through it, nor foot of beast shall pass through it, neither shall it be inhabited forty years.
Pride uttered aloud, The river is mine, I made it, is enough to ruin a whole nation. God will strip Egypt bare: the sword cuts man and beast, the land spills out its people into desolation, and those who thought they held the balance of power become contemptible. But He does not leave them forever; restoration follows after forty years of waste.
AI summary
Commenting on Ezekiel 29:8-16
No foot of man shall pass through it,.... This must be understood not strictly, but with some limitation; it cannot be thought that Egypt was so depopulated as that there should not be a single passenger in it; but that there should be few inhabitants in it, or that there should be scarce any that should come into it for traffic; it should not be...
forty years--answering to the forty years in which the Israelites, their former bondsmen, wandered in "the wilderness" (compare Note, see on Eze 29:5). JEROME remarks the number forty is one often connected with affliction and judgment. The rains of the flood in forty days brought destruction on the world. Moses, Elias, and the Saviour fasted forty days.