Egypt

Egypt (Hebrew Mitzrayim, a dual form often taken to mean "the two lands" of Upper and Lower Egypt) is the ancient civilization of the Nile valley and, after Israel itself, the most significant national setting in the Old Testament. Watered by the Nile's annual flood amid surrounding desert, it was among the oldest, wealthiest, and most powerful kingdoms of antiquity, ruled by the Pharaoh and renowned for its granaries, its monuments, and its idolatry. In Scripture Egypt is supremely "the house of slavery" (Exodus 20:2), the land from which the LORD redeemed his people — and so it becomes a lasting symbol of bondage and of the world's security set against trust in God.

Egypt enters the story early as a refuge in famine: Abram sojourns there (Genesis 12:10), and Joseph, sold into slavery, rises to become its governor and preserves his family alive, so that Jacob's household settles in the fertile land of Goshen (Genesis 41:39–41; Genesis 47:5–6). There Israel multiplies but is enslaved by a king "who did not know Joseph" (Exodus 1:8–14). The exodus — the deliverance of the nation through Moses, the ten plagues by which the LORD judged "all the gods of Egypt," the Passover, and the crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus 12:29–32; Exodus 14:21–31) — is the formative saving event of the Old Testament, after 430 years of sojourning (Exodus 12:40–41). Yet in the wilderness the people repeatedly long to return to Egypt's plenty (Numbers 11:5), making it the emblem of the slavery the heart is loath to leave.

Egypt remained entangled with Israel's later history: Solomon married Pharaoh's daughter, Jeroboam took refuge there, and Shishak plundered Jerusalem (1 Kings 11:40; 1 Kings 14:25–26). The prophets repeatedly warned against the fatal temptation to lean on Egypt's horses and chariots rather than on the LORD — "Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help" (Isaiah 31:1; Isaiah 30:1–5; Hosea 7:11) — and a remnant fleeing Babylon disregarded that word by carrying Jeremiah down to Egypt (Jeremiah 42:13–22). Ezekiel pronounced extended oracles against it (Ezekiel 29:1–16). Remarkably, the same prophets foresaw Egypt's redemption: Isaiah envisions a day when Egypt and Assyria worship the LORD alongside Israel, called "Egypt my people" and "the work of my hands" (Isaiah 19:24–25).

In the New Testament Egypt again shelters God's people when the child Jesus is carried there to escape Herod, so that the words "Out of Egypt I called my son" are fulfilled (Matthew 2:13–15; cf. Hosea 11:1) — Jesus recapitulating Israel's exodus. Finally Revelation employs "Egypt" figuratively for the great city "where their Lord was crucified," the archetype of a world in bondage and opposed to God (Revelation 11:8). Thus Egypt threads through the whole canon as the paradigm of slavery from which God redeems, the standing warning against trusting worldly power, and — by grace — a nation gathered at last into the worship of the one true God.