Ezekiel 29:5

5 I will leave you in the wilderness, You and all the fish of your rivers; You shall fall on the open field; You shall not be picked up or gathered. I have given you as food To the beasts of the field And to the birds of the heavens.

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, 'Thus says the Lord God: "Behold, I am against you, O Pharaoh king of Egypt, O great monster who lies in the midst of his rivers, Who has said, 'My River is my own; I have made it for myself.'

4 But I will put hooks in your jaws, And cause the fish of your rivers to stick to your scales; I will bring you up out of the midst of your rivers, And all the fish in your rivers will stick to your scales.

5 I will leave you in the wilderness, You and all the fish of your rivers; You shall fall on the open field; You shall not be picked up or gathered. I have given you as food To the beasts of the field And to the birds of the heavens.

6 "Then all the inhabitants of Egypt Shall know that I am the Lord, Because they have been a staff of reed to the house of Israel.

7 When they took hold of you with the hand, You broke and tore all their shoulders; When they leaned on you, You broke and made all their backs quiver."

Footnotes

• [a]. Following Masoretic Text, Septuagint, and Vulgate; some Hebrew manuscripts and Targum read buried.