Ezekiel 29:12

Hebrew (Westminster Leningrad Codex)

English Translation

I will make the land of Egypt a desolation in the midst of the countries that are desolate; and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be a desolation forty years; and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries.

World English Bible · Public Domain

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וְֽזֵרִיתִ֖ים

zârâh

H2219

“and · to scatter · them”

Conjunction + Verb, Piel, Sequential Perfect, 1st Person, Common, Singular + Suffix, Personal, 3rd Person, Masculine, Plural

Appears 39× in the Hebrew Bible
First appears at Exodus 32:20

Full BDB Definition

Origin: a primitive root [compare H2114 ]

TWOT: 579

to scatter, fan, cast away, winnow, disperse, compass, spread, be scattered, be dispersed - (Qal) - to scatter - to fan, winnow - (Niphal) to be scattered, be dispersed - (Piel) - to scatter, disperse (intensive of Qal) - to winnow, sift - (Pual) to be scattered, be spread out

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

22: words
15: distinct lemmas
Prophets: section

Shared distinctive vocabulary

וְֽזֵרִיתִ֖ים to scatter H2219 occurs in 38 verses of the Hebrew Bible. Also found in:

Grammatical profile

6 verbs
13 nouns
1 adjective
2 particles

Verb forms

וְנָתַתִּ֣י Qal · Sequential Perfect
נְשַׁמּ֗וֹת Niphal · Participle Active
מָֽחֳרָבוֹת֙ Hophal · Participle Passive
תִּֽהְיֶ֣יןָ Qal · Imperfect
וַהֲפִצֹתִ֤י Hiphil · Sequential Perfect
וְֽזֵרִיתִ֖ים Piel · Sequential Perfect

Repetition

Words recur within this verse — often emphatic in Hebrew:

אֶרֶץ֩ land H776 ×3
מִצְרַ֨יִם Egypt H4714 ×2
שְׁמָמָ֜ה desolation H8077 ×2
בְּת֣וֹךְ midst H8432 ×2
וְעָרֶ֨יהָ֙ city H5892 ×2

Hebrew & Septuagint length

In English translation the verse runs 50 words from the Hebrew and 51 from the Septuagint (LXX English) — closely comparable.

A rough comparison of the two English renderings, which tokenize alike — not a word-level alignment.

Word counts can differ between the Hebrew and the Greek without any difference in meaning — e.g. the Hebrew direct-object marker אֵת has no separate Greek word, and Greek often adds the article ὁ.

In the original languages it is 22 Hebrew tokens and 33 Greek tokens — but the two are counted differently (Hebrew bundles its prefixes and suffixes into one token; the Greek is in lemma form), so that isn’t a like-for-like length.

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to Ezekiel 29:12 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

Jeremiah 46:19 You daughter who dwell in Egypt, furnish yourself to go into captivity; for Memphis shall become a desolation, and shall be burnt up, without inhabitant.
Ezekiel 30:7 They shall be desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate; and her cities shall be in the midst of the cities that are wasted.
Ezekiel 30:23 I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries.
Jeremiah 25:15–19 For thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, to me: take this cup of the wine of wrath at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send you, to drink it.
Ezekiel 30:26 I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and disperse them through the countries; and they shall know that I am Yahweh.
Jeremiah 27:6–11 Now have I given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant; and the animals of the field also have I given him to serve him.

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

Hebrew and Greek witnesses Masoretic Hebrew ↔ Greek Septuagint

The same verse in the two great witnesses to the Old Testament, shown verse-for-verse.

These are two independent witnesses, not word-aligned to each other, and the Septuagint is shown in lemma (dictionary) form.

Hebrew Ezekiel 29:12 Masoretic · Westminster Leningrad Codex

וְנָתַתִּ֣י אֶת אֶרֶץ֩ מִצְרַ֨יִם שְׁמָמָ֜ה בְּת֣וֹךְ אֲרָצ֣וֹת נְשַׁמּ֗וֹת וְעָרֶ֨יהָ֙ בְּת֨וֹךְ עָרִ֤ים מָֽחֳרָבוֹת֙ תִּֽהְיֶ֣יןָ שְׁמָמָ֔ה אַרְבָּעִ֖ים שָׁנָ֑ה וַהֲפִצֹתִ֤י אֶת מִצְרַ֨יִם֙ בַּגּוֹיִ֔ם וְֽזֵרִיתִ֖ים בָּאֲרָצֽוֹת

I will make the land of Egypt a desolation in the midst of the countries that are desolate; and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be a desolation forty years; and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries.

World English Bible · Public Domain

Greek LXX Ezekiel 29:12 Septuagint · lemma form

καί δίδωμι ὁ γῆ αὐτός ἀπώλεια ἐν μέσος γῆ ἐρημόω καί ὁ πόλις αὐτός ἐν μέσος πόλις ἐρημόω εἰμί τεσσαράκοντα ἔτος καί διασπείρω αἴγυπτος ἐν ὁ ἔθνος καί λικμάω αὐτός εἰς ὁ χώρα

And I will cause her land to be utterly destroyed in the midst of a land that is desolate, and her cities shall be desolate forty years in the midst of cities that are desolate: and I will disperse Egypt among the nations, and will utterly scatter them into the countries.

LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) · Public Domain

Hebrew: Westminster Leningrad Codex (CC BY 4.0). Greek: Septuagint (public domain); English from LXX2012 (modern English Septuagint) (Public Domain). How the Septuagint differs from the Hebrew →

Targum (Aramaic paraphrase)

The Targum is the ancient Jewish Aramaic paraphrase of the Hebrew Scriptures — an interpretive translation, not the Hebrew text itself. Onkelos (literal) and Pseudo-Jonathan (expansive) render the Torah, and Jonathan the Prophets. Coverage is partial: where no permissively-licensed English translation exists for a verse, only the Aramaic is shown. This is verse-level text, not a word-by-word alignment to the Hebrew.

Targum Jonathan Prophets (Joshua–Malachi)

וְאֶתֵּן יַת אַרְעָא דְמִצְרַיִם לְצָדוּ בְּגוֹ מְדִינָן צַדְיָן וְקִרְוָהָא בְּגוֹ קִרְוִין דַהֲוָאָה חֶרְבָּן יֶהֶוְיָן לְצָדוּ אַרְבְּעִין שְׁנִין וְאַגְלֵי יַת מִצְרָאֵי לְבֵינֵי עַמְמַיָא וֶאֱבַדְרִינוּן בִּמְדִינָתָא:

(no public-domain English translation for this verse)

Targum Jonathan — Aramaic: “Mikraot Gedolot” (public domain). English: “Sefaria Community Translation” (CC0 1.0 (public-domain dedication)); “London "Chaldee Paraphrase," 1871” (public domain). Text via Sefaria.

Commentary

Notes on Ezekiel 29:12 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Trapp's Complete Commentary

John Trapp

Eze 29:12 And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries [that are] desolate, and her cities among the cities [that are] laid waste shall be desolate forty years: and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries.

Ver. 12. In the midst of the countries.] Palestine, Moab, Edom, Judea, &c. See Jer 46:18-20

And her cities.] Which are said to have been twenty thousand in the reign of Amasis, the chief whereof were Alexandria, Thebes, Babylon, Memphis, &c.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown

Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown

As Israel passed through a term of wilderness discipline (compare Eze 20:35, &c.), which was in its essential features to be repeated again, so it was to be with Egypt [FAIRBAIRN]. Some Egyptians were to be carried to Babylon, also many "scattered" in Arabia and Ethiopia through fear; but mainly the "scattering" was to be the dissipation of their power, even though the people still remained in their own land.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Adam Clarke's Commentary

Verse 12. Shall be desolate forty years] The country from Migdol or Magdolan, which was on the isthmus between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, was so completely ruined, that it might well be called desert; and it is probable that this desolation continued during the whole of the reign of Amasis, which was just forty years. See Herod. lib. iii. c. 10; and see Calmet.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(12) Scatter the Egyptians among the nations.—Megasthenes and Berosus state that Nebuchadnezzar on his conquest of Egypt, sent great numbers of the people captive to Babylon; others doubtless, as in similar cases, took refuge in Ethiopia, Libya, and other neighbouring lands. The kind of desolation foretold for Egypt is the same as that for “desolate” cities and countries that fell under the power of the conqueror: they were to be plundered and reduced to subjection.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne

12. Cf. Eze_12:15, Eze_26:19, Eze_30:7.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

John Gill's Exposition

And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate,.... As Judea and others, made desolate by the king of Babylon:

and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years; such as Thebes, Sais, Memphis, and others; which should share the same fate as Jerusalem and other principal cities in other countries, which fell into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar:

and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries; such as were not carried captive into Babylon fled into other countries, as Arabia, Ethiopia, and other places, Berosus (u) makes mention of this captivity of the Egyptians under Nebuchadnezzar the son, which no other writer does.

(u) Apud Joseph. Antiqu. l. 10. c. 11. sect. 1.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations

This verse is a further repeated confirmation of what was said before, and needs no new explication, every thing in it being already spoken to in the former verses.

Among the nations; some into captivity, others by a timely retirement dispersed themselves, and got among their neighbours, who escaped, and where they kept, till the forty years expired.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

Daniel D. Whedon

12. I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations — Every oriental conqueror took back with him strings of captives and gave them as slaves to his soldiers and allies; but certainly there was no wholesale deportation of the people, as in the case of Israel and Judah. (Compare Eze_12:15.)

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Pulpit Commentary

I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations. As before, records are silent as to any such dispersion. All that we can say is that such a deportation was uniformly the sequel of the conquests of an Oriental king, as in the ease of the captivities of Samaria (2Ki_17:6) and Jerusalem, and of the nations that were settled in Samaria, (2Ki_17:6) and of the Persians by Darius; that if we find reason to believe that Egypt was invaded by Nebuchadnezzar after the destruction of Jerusalem, we may assume, with little risk of doubt, that it was followed by what Ezekiel describes.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

Ezekiel, in the Prophets, opens this verse with 22 words (15 distinct Hebrew lemmas). Its most distinctive word is zârâh (“to scatter”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

The word zârâh carries the sense “to scatter.” How does it shape the verse?
How does Exodus 32:20, which shares the word «to scatter», read alongside this verse?
What does the repetition of “land” (3× in this one verse) do in this verse?
The translations on this page render this verse differently — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment. What might account for the different wordings?
«וְנָתַתִּ֣י» is a Qal Sequential Perfect verb. How does that grammatical form shape the action described?
Compare how Trapp's Complete Commentary and Jamieson, Fausset & Brown read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

This verse counts 22 Hebrew ↔ 33 Greek words.
These translations choose different wording for 11 words in this verse.
“land” occurs 3× in this single verse.
15 distinct Hebrew lemmas span 22 words in this verse.