In the twenty-seventh year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the word of the LORD came to me:
The date of this prophecy is observable; it was in the twenty-seventh year of Ezekiel's captivity, sixteen years after the prophecy in the former part of the chapter, and almost as long after those which follow in the next chapters; but it comes in here for the explication of all that was said against Egypt.
Commenting on Ezekiel 29:17-21
And it came to pass in the seven and twentieth year,.... Of Jeconiah's captivity; or of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar, as Jarchi, Kimchi, and Abendana, from Seder Olam Rabba (z), observe; though it was in the thirty fifth year of his reign that Tyre was taken by him; and after that Egypt was given him: in the first month, in the first day of the...
The departure from the chronological order occurs here only, among the prophecies as to foreign nations, in order to secure greater unity of subject.