Ezekiel 32:16

16 This is a lamentation; it shall be chanted. The women of the nations shall chant it. Over Egypt and all its hordes they shall chant it, says the Lord God.

Ezekiel 32:16 Meaning and Commentary

Ezekiel 32:16

This is the lamentation with which they shall lament her
The Egyptians themselves, or rather they that are after mentioned. The Targum is,

``the prophet said, a lamentation is this prophecy, and it shall be for a lamentation;''

he was bid at the beginning of it to take up a lamentation, and now at the end of it he pronounces it to be one, and that it should be sung as such: the daughters of the nations shall lament for her;
either literally understood, it being the business and custom of women to say or sing the funeral dirge, or the lamentation at the interment of the deceased; or figuratively, the inhabitants of other nations. So Ben Melech and the Targum, ``the villages of the people shall lament her''; that is, the inhabitants of them, who were in alliance with Egypt, and under its protection: they shall lament for her, even for Egypt, and for all her multitude;
for the desolation of the land, and for the vast numbers of people that should be slain with the sword, or carried captive: saith the Lord God;
which is added for the confirmation of it; for what he has spoken shall be done.

Ezekiel 32:16 In-Context

14 Then I will make their waters clear, and cause their streams to run like oil, says the Lord God.

15 When I make the land of Egypt desolate and when the land is stripped of all that fills it, when I strike down all who live in it, then they shall know that I am the Lord.

16 This is a lamentation; it shall be chanted. The women of the nations shall chant it. Over Egypt and all its hordes they shall chant it, says the Lord God.

17 In the twelfth year, in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the month, the word of the Lord came to me:

18 Mortal, wail over the hordes of Egypt, and send them down, with Egypt and the daughters of majestic nations, to the world below, with those who go down to the Pit.