Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Yesterday we started reading Ezekiel's prophecies for Israel's enemy nations

and we ended with a lament for Tyra, the wealthy city-state north of Israel.

One thing that shows up repeatedly in today's reading is

the pride of the nations and how God opposes that pride, even if that pride directly

corresponds to gifts and skills he has given them.

For instance, God affirms that Tyra is legitimately beautiful

and its leaders are certainly wise,

but they've corrupted those good gifts

through the pride in their beauty and wisdom and wealth.

Then we read about Egypt, who is proud of its power and position.

People who take credit for their own strengths or who fixate on them too much, steal the

credit that belongs to the giver of those gifts.

When you encounter people who are like this, isn't it kind of repulsive?

I think that might be one reason why the self-esteem movement has backfired on us.

Telling everyone how awesome they are might solve one problem but it creates another.

It fosters entitlement and arrogance and before we know it we've built a world of

insufferable humans. Sometimes swinging the pendulum

to the other end doesn't create the balance we're hoping for. Today we opened

in chapter 28 with prophecies directed at the leadership of Tyra.

It's unclear if these two sections are referring to the same person or not.

The word used in verse two is sometimes translated as leader and sometimes as prince,

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