Ezekiel 29:5

5 I will fling you out into the desert, and also all the fish from the Nile's canals. You will fall on the open ground, and won't be gathered or retrieved. I've given you to the beasts of the earth and the birds in the sky for food.

Ezekiel 29:5 Meaning and Commentary

Ezekiel 29:5

And I will leave thee thrown into the wilderness, thee, and
all the fish of thy rivers
Where fish in common cannot live, but die as soon almost as out of the water, and on dry land, excepting those that are of the amphibious kind. This wilderness designs the deserts of Lybia and Cyrene, where the battle was fought between Hophra and Amasis; and where the Egyptian army perished, only their king, before compared to a crocodile, which lives on land, as well as in water, escaped. The Targum is,

``I will cast thee into a wilderness, and all the princes of thy strength:''

thou shalt fall upon the open fields thou shalt not be brought
together, nor gathered,
this is to he understood of his army; for what is proper to an army is sometimes ascribed to the head or general of it; which fell by the sword in the fields of Lybia and Cyrene and was so discomfited, that the remains of it could not be brought and gathered together again: or the sense is, that those that were slain were left in the open fields, and had no burial; they were not gathered to the grave, as Kimchi interprets it; and so the Targum,

``upon the face of the field thy carcass shall be cast; it shall not be gathered, nor shall it be buried:''

this was only true of the carcasses of the soldiers slain in battle, not of the king, who fled, and afterwards in another battle was taken by Amasis, and strangled in the city of Sais, where he was buried among his ancestors, as Herodotus ^F8 relates: I have given thee for meat to the beasts of the field and to the fowls
of the heaven;
that is, his army; as the armies of the kings, beast, and false prophet, will be at the battle of Armageddon, when the two latter will be taken and cast alive into the burning lake, of which this monarch was an emblem, ( Revelation 19:17-20 ) .

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FOOTNOTES:

F8 Euterpe, sive l. 2. c. 169.

Ezekiel 29:5 In-Context

3 Speak and say, The LORD God proclaims: I'm against you, Pharaoh, Egypt's king, great crocodile lurking in the Nile's canals, who says, "The Nile is all mine; I made it for myself!"

4 I will set hooks in your jaws; I will make the fish from the Nile's canals cling to your scales. I will drag you out of the Nile's canals, and also all the fish from the Nile's canals clinging to your scales.

5 I will fling you out into the desert, and also all the fish from the Nile's canals. You will fall on the open ground, and won't be gathered or retrieved. I've given you to the beasts of the earth and the birds in the sky for food.

6 Everyone living in Egypt will know that I am the LORD. Because they were a flimsy crutch for the house of Israel—

7 when they took you in hand, you would splinter and make their shoulders sore; when they leaned on you, you would break, bringing them to their knees—