Today, I am reading and commenting on Ezekiel 32-33.

As I read today’s passage I was struck by the fact that God tells the Egyptians, through Ezekiel, “Go down and be laid among the uncircumcised.”  Then he goes on to describe the armies which God had brought down previously, among whom the Egyptians would lie.  He describes the horde of Elam’s destruction by saying, “All of them are uncircumcised, killed by the sword.”  He repeats variations of this as he describes other fallen empires.  Saying in various ways “uncircumcised, killed by the sword.”  Elsewhere, I had learned that the Egyptians circumcised their young men.  Which led me to think that Ezekiel means something different than just “not Israelite” when he says “uncircumcised” here.  As I thought about it more and read more closely I began to think that the passage seems to be describing a place where those distant from God went after death.  It seems to me that Ezekiel is saying that those who died because they brought God’s judgement against themselves will lie somewhere separate from God and from those whom God has judged righteous.  The passage which most brings home to me what Ezekiel is telling us in this prophecy is in verse thirty of chapter 32, “They lie uncircumcised with those killed by the sword and bear their shame with those who go down to the pit.”  That reads to me like there is a place to which it is shameful for the dead to go, and one to which it is not shameful to go in death.  Or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the “uncircumcised”, those whom God judges as unrighteous, go “down to the pit” in death, and those whom God judges as righteous do not go to the pit.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.