1And it happened in the twelfth year, in the twelfth month, on the first of the month, that the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 2“Man, sound a lament over Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and say to him:
To a lion among nations were you likened,
but you were like a crocodile in the seas
churning through your rivers,
muddying waters with your feet,
trampling their rivers.
3Thus said the Master, the LORD: I will cast over you My net in the assembly of many peoples and bring you up in My toils. 4And I will abandon you on the ground and cast you on the surface of the field. And I will settle upon you all the fowl of the heavens and sate from you the beasts of the earth. 5And I will put your flesh on the mountains and will fill the valleys with your blood. 6And I will water the earth with what floods from you, from your blood on the mountains, and the channels shall fill from you. 7And I will cover the heavens with your going dark, and I will darken their stars. I will cover the sun with cloud, and the noon shall not shine its light. 8All the sources of light in the heavens will I darken upon you. And I will set darkness over your land, said the LORD. 9And I will vex the heart of many peoples when I bring your breaking among the nations, upon nations that you never knew. 10And I will shock many peoples over you, and their kings shall be horrified by you when I let My sword fly over their faces, and they shall tremble constantly, each for his life, on the day of your downfall. 11For thus said the Master, the LORD:
The sword of the king of Babylonia shall come upon you.
12By the swords of warriors will I make your throng fall.
Fearsome among the nations they all are,
and they shall plunder the pride of Egypt,
and all her throng shall be destroyed.
13And I will destroy all their cattle
from alongside many waters,
and no more shall human foot muddy them,
and the hooves of cattle shall not muddy them.
14Then will I sink their waters
and lead their rivers like oil
—said the Master, the LORD.
15When I make the land of Egypt a desolation
and the land and its fullness become desolate,
when I strike down the dwellers there,
they shall know that I am the LORD.
16It is a lament, and the daughters of Egypt lament it,
they shall lament it over Egypt,
and over all their throng they shall lament it.”
—said the Master, the LORD.
17And it happened in the twelfth year, on the fifteenth of the month, the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 18“Man, weep over the throng of Egypt and bring it down, you and the daughters of the nations:
The mighty to the netherworld
with those who go down to the Pit.
19More lovely than who were you? Go down!
and be laid with the uncircumcised.
20Among the slain by the sword they shall fall.
The sword is let loose. They have pulled down her and all her throngs.
21The mightiest warriors speak to him
from Sheol, together with his allies:
The uncircumcised have come down, they lie,
those slain by the sword.
22Assyria is there and all her assembly,
round her all her graves.
All of them are slain,
fallen by the sword,
23whose graves have been put
in the far reaches of the Pit.
And her assembly is round her gravesite,
all of them are slain,
fallen by the sword,
in the land of the living.
24Elam is there and all her throng
round her gravesite.
All of them are slain,
fallen by the sword,
who came down uncircumcised
to the netherworld,
who had sown terror
in the land of the living,
and they bear their disgrace
with those who go down to the Pit.
25Amidst the slain
they made her a place to lie
round her graves.
All of them are uncircumcised,
fallen by the sword.
For they had sown terror
in the land of the living,
and they bear their disgrace
with those who go down to the Pit.
26Meshech and Tubal are there and all their throng
round their graves.
All of them are uncircumcised,
For they had sown terror
in the land of the living.
27And they shall not lie with the warriors,
those fallen of the uncircumcised
who came down to Sheol with their weapons of war
and put their swords beneath their heads,
and their crimes were upon their bones,
for the terror of the warriors was upon the land of the living.
28As for you, in the midst of the uncircumcised you are broken,
and you lie with those slain by the sword.
29Edom is there and all her kings and all her princes, who despite their valor were put with those slain by the sword—they lie with the uncircumcised and with those who go down to the Pit. 30The princes of the north are all of them there and all the Sidonians, who have come down with the slain in their terror, shamed of their valor, and they lie with the uncircumcised, with those slain by the sword, and bear their disgrace with those who go down to the Pit. 31Pharaoh sees them and regrets all her throng. Pharaoh and all his force are slain by the sword, said the Master, the LORD. 32For he had sown terror in the land of the living and was laid down in the midst of the uncircumcised with those slain by the sword—Pharaoh and all her throng”—said the Master, the LORD.
CHAPTER 32 NOTES
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1. in the twelfth year, in the twelfth month. This sets the prophecy in 585 B.C.E., some months after the destruction of the kingdom of Judah.
2. To a lion among nations were you likened. The metaphor of the conquering king as a lion is conventional throughout the Near East and appears frequently in biblical poetry.
but you were like a crocodile in the seas. The crocodile, while perhaps fearsome, has little of the grandeur of the lion and is confined to his aqueous habitat (“the seas” here are the Nile and its tributaries). It can be caught with nets (verse 3), and when it is flung on dry land far from the water (verse 4), it cannot long survive.
5. with your blood. The Masoretic ramutekha is opaque. Some interpreters derive it from r-m-h, a verbal stem that means “to throw,” and so take it to indicate the body of Pharaoh thrown away in open country. Because that interpretation seems strained, this translation follows the Septuagint in reading damkha, “your blood,” which aptly matches “your flesh” in the first half of this sentence.
6. what floods from you. The single Hebrew word here is problematic, and so the translation is conjectural.
7. I will darken their stars. Although apocalyptic darkness is often part of prophecies of God’s day of judgment, the elaboration of engulfing darkness has special resonance here in relation to Pharaoh because it recalls the plague of darkness that descended on Egypt. “I will set darkness over your land” in verse 8 is an especially pointed allusion to Exodus.
10. when I let My sword fly over their faces. The horrendous power of God’s act of destruction is so sweeping that the surrounding peoples fear for their own lives, even though the wrath is not directed at them.
14. lead their rivers like oil. When poured, oil advances in a slow trickle.
16. the daughters of Egypt lament it. As elsewhere in the Bible, women figure as designated keeners crying over deaths.
18. you. This translation reads ʾatah, “you,” instead of the Masoretic ʾotah, “her.”
19. be laid with the uncircumcised. This again appears as a shameful fate. Circumcision was practiced in Egypt’s priestly class, and there may have been a difference between a circumcised elite and uncircumcised masses.
23. who had sown terror. The literal sense of the Hebrew verb here is “had given.” This is not a collocation that occurs elsewhere.
25. with all her throng. The “her” refers to Elam, in Persia, following the common biblical usage in which nations are represented in the feminine singular because of an implied personification of the nation as a woman.
26. Meshech and Tubal. These are peoples of Asia Minor, always paired together in the Bible. The Hebrew text does not have an “and” here and treats the two as a feminine singular, but they are in fact two distinct peoples.
pierced by the sword. There is a slight variation here in this highly repetitious text. In previous instances, the phrase was ḥaleley ḥerev, “slain by the sword,” whereas here a passive verb, meḥuleley, is used instead of the noun.
27. And they shall not lie with the warriors. That is, they shall be denied the dignity of a warrior’s burial.
who came down to Sheol with their weapons of war / and put their swords beneath their heads. This line invokes the widespread practice, abundantly confirmed by archaeology, in the Near East (and, indeed, elsewhere) of burying warriors with their weapons.
28. you are broken. This verb is often used for defeat or catastrophe, but here it probably indicates that the corpse in the grave is damaged or mutilated through violent death.
30. The princes of the north. Although “north” is used freely by the prophets to designate distant enemy powers, the mention here of the Sidonians makes this a reference to the Phoenicians.
31. Pharaoh sees them. Witnessing all these rulers who have descended to the netherworld in disgrace, Pharaoh is compelled to recognize that he shares their dire fate.
all her throng. As in the previous usages here, the feminine “her” refers to the nation, Egypt.
Pharaoh and all his force. This is virtually a formulaic phrase, occurring in a variant form in the destruction of the Egyptian army at the Sea of Reeds in Exodus 15.
32. he had sown terror. The Masoretic Text shows a first-person singular verb, but three ancient versions, more plausibly, have the third person.