Catholic Commentary
Date and Commission: Lament Over Pharaoh
1In the twelfth year, in the twelfth month, in the first day of the month, Yahweh’s word came to me, saying,2“Son of man, take up a lamentation over Pharaoh king of Egypt, and tell him, ‘You were likened to a young lion of the nations; yet you are as a monster in the seas. You broke out with your rivers, and troubled the waters with your feet, and fouled their rivers.’”
Ezekiel 32:1–2 records God commanding the prophet to compose a funeral dirge over Pharaoh of Egypt, a specific Hebrew literary genre called qînâh performed in a distinctive grief-mimicking meter. The command to mourn Pharaoh while he still lives functions as a prophetic act that declares his downfall already accomplished in God's counsel, issued months after Jerusalem's destruction.
God commissions a funeral dirge over a living pharaoh—declaring that earthly power, however mighty, is already dead in God's sight.
Ezekiel 32:1 — The Date Formula Ezekiel's oracles are anchored in history with a precision unusual even among the prophets. "The twelfth year, in the twelfth month, on the first day of the month" places this oracle in early 585 BC (approximately February–March), only months after the catastrophic fall of Jerusalem in 586 BC (cf. Ezek 33:21). This date is not incidental: the destruction of the Holy City has just been confirmed, and Ezekiel now turns the lens of divine judgment outward toward Egypt, the great southern superpower that had proved a broken reed to Judah (cf. Ezek 29:6–7). The formula "the word of the LORD came to me" (wayehî debar-YHWH 'êlay) is Ezekiel's standard prophetic legitimation formula, appearing over fifty times in the book. It insists that what follows is not the prophet's own invention or political commentary—it is a received word, a divine commission. For the Catholic exegete, the passive reception of prophetic speech anticipates the theology of biblical inspiration articulated in Dei Verbum §11: the human author writes as a true instrument of the Holy Spirit, while God remains the primary author.
The fact that this is the first day of the month may carry liturgical resonance. In ancient Israel, the new moon (rôʾsh ḥodesh) was a day of assembly and sacrifice (Num 28:11–15). God chooses a moment of communal attention to deliver His sentence—there is a public, almost liturgical quality to the divine judgment here.
Ezekiel 32:2 — The Commission and the Address God addresses Ezekiel with the title "Son of man" (ben-'ādām), used ninety-three times in Ezekiel alone. The phrase is simultaneously a marker of human frailty and prophetic vocation: Ezekiel stands before the divine as a creature, yet is entrusted with the sovereign word of God. This tension—human weakness as the vessel of divine speech—becomes theologically rich in the New Testament, where "Son of Man" is taken up by Jesus as His own self-designation (Dan 7:13; Mark 14:62), elevating the Ezekielian title into a Christological claim.
The commission is to "take up a lamentation" (śê' qînâ). The qînâh is a specific Hebrew genre: a funeral dirge sung over the dead, often composed in a distinctive limping 3:2 meter that mimics the rhythm of grief. To be ordered to compose a qînâh over Pharaoh, who is still alive and ruling, is an act of devastating prophetic audacity—it declares, proleptically, that his death and Egypt's ruin are already accomplished in the divine counsel. The great king is eulogized before his fall; this is the prophetic perfectum, the certainty of divine decree expressed in the tense of completed action.
Typological and Spiritual Senses Pharaoh in Ezekiel's oracles functions as a type of every worldly power that sets itself against God and exploits His people. The Church Fathers, particularly Origen and Jerome, read Ezekiel's Egypt oracles as signifying the spiritual Egypt of sin and bondage. Jerome, in his commentary on Ezekiel, notes that Pharaoh's greatness makes his fall all the more instructive: superbia (pride) is always the prelude to ruina (ruin). The structural parallel with the Exodus narrative (Ezek 29–32 forming a sustained Egypt-cycle) activates typological memory: the God who once shattered Egypt to liberate His people from slavery now again pronounces judgment on a Pharaoh who has ensnared Israel in false hope. The lamentation genre itself, used to mourn one who has chosen self-deification over submission to God, speaks to the tragedy at the heart of all idolatry: those who would be worshipped end up as objects of grief.
Catholic tradition illuminates this passage on several interlocking levels.
On Prophetic Inspiration: The precise date formula and the reception formula ("the word of the LORD came to me") illustrate what Dei Verbum §7 calls the divine economy of Revelation—God communicating Himself through historical events and human mediators. The prophet is not an ecstatic automaton but a historically situated person whose very biography (exile in Babylon, witness to Jerusalem's fall) is woven into the divine message. St. Thomas Aquinas teaches in the Summa Theologiae (II–II, q. 171–174) that prophecy is a gratia gratis data, a grace given not for the prophet's personal sanctification but for the building up of the Church—a principle already operative here.
On Divine Sovereignty Over Nations: Catholic social teaching, drawing on the scriptural tradition of prophets such as Ezekiel, insists that no political power is ultimate. The Catechism (CCC §2244) warns of the totalitarian temptation whenever the state claims an absolute authority that belongs to God alone. Pharaoh becomes, in this light, an archetype of the state that deifies itself. The Church Fathers, especially St. Augustine in De Civitate Dei (Book V), saw in the falls of Egypt and Babylon prefigurations of the passing of all earthly civitates before the eternal City of God.
On the Lamentation as Mercy: It is theologically significant that God does not simply destroy—He laments. The dirge over Pharaoh is an act of prophetic love, a last opportunity for Egypt to hear the word of judgment and perhaps repent (cf. Jonah 3). St. John Chrysostom observed that divine judgment always contains within it an invitation: "He announces beforehand that He may be heard; He laments that the death may be averted." This points toward the fullness of revelation in Christ, who Himself wept over Jerusalem before pronouncing its judgment (Luke 19:41–44).
Contemporary Catholics live in a world saturated with what might be called neo-Pharaonic power: political leaders, ideological systems, and cultural movements that present themselves as ultimate arbiters of human flourishing and brook no accountability beyond themselves. This passage offers a pointed corrective. The God who commissions a funeral dirge over a reigning monarch teaches us that no earthly power is permanent — its end is already inscribed in divine providence.
Practically, this text invites a specific examination of conscience: Where have I placed false hope in human institutions, political leaders, or earthly systems the way Judah placed false hope in Egypt? The prophetic "broken reed" of Ezekiel 29 is as relevant as ever. Catholics are called to engage political life fully (CCC §2239) while holding all temporal powers loosely, with the eschatological sobriety that comes from knowing that history's final word belongs to God, not to any Pharaoh.
Additionally, the date formula should prompt us to pray with historical awareness. Liturgical time — the Church's calendar — is our own version of the prophetic date stamp: it insists that faith is not abstract but lived in this day, this moment, under the sovereign providence of God.
Commentary