Sefer Yechezkel, chapter 29. In the tenth year, in the tenth month, on the twelfth of the month, the word of Hashem came to me, saying. The Malbim asks: in the tenth year? We remember that the downfall of Tzur was already prophesied in the eleventh year. So what is happening now, is he suddenly stepping back? He is now beginning to speak of the tenth year, when earlier we were already in the eleventh year. The Malbim, and the other commentators too, deal with this question. The reason he placed the downfall of Tzur first, even though chronologically it was actually later, is because he prophesies about Pharaoh also in year twelve and in year twenty seven. Therefore he brought the prophecy of Tzur first, so that he could group all the prophecies about Pharaoh together. Because otherwise the prophecy of Tzur would have had to be placed in the middle, interrupting them. In the tenth year, Egypt, then in the eleventh, Tzur, and afterward more prophecies about Egypt. He did not want to do this, so he placed Tzur first even though Tzur was in year eleven, and afterward brought the prophecies about Egypt in one continuous stretch. He says another thing: Egypt was destroyed many times, and the final destruction was after Tzur. Therefore he arranges this prophecy after Tzur, since its final destruction was later.
Son of man, set your face against Pharaoh king of Egypt, and prophesy against him and against all of Egypt. Son of man, set your face against Pharaoh king of Egypt, because Pharaoh made himself into a god, and because Pharaoh ruled a great rule, meaning he had vast dominion, and the downfall of Pharaoh is really the downfall of the nation as a whole. Therefore when he speaks, he speaks of Pharaoh, even though the prophecy is not actually personal to Pharaoh. When he speaks here about Pharaoh, he is speaking about what will happen to all of Egypt. So why do I refer to Pharaoh? First, because Pharaoh made himself into a god, and second, because he had great dominion. Therefore he turns to him as if speaking to him personally.
Speak and say, thus says Hashem Elohim: Behold I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great sea monster who crouches in the midst of his rivers, who said, my river is mine, and I made myself. Speak and say, thus says Hashem Elohim, behold I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he calls Pharaoh king of Egypt the great sea monster who crouches in the midst of his rivers. Where does this expression come from, and why specifically is this the metaphor? The Malbim explains: the Egyptians believed that the Nile was holy. Therefore we know that when the Holy One, blessed be He, exacts punishment, He first exacts it from the gods of the nation and afterward from the nation itself. Therefore, at the beginning, the Holy One, blessed be He, struck the plague of blood in order to strike the Nile. They believed the Nile was holy because they saw its benefit; they would irrigate from it, "you watered it with your foot like a vegetable garden," for so was the way of Egypt. And since this was so, they attributed some sort of qualities of holiness to the Nile. The great sea monsters that are in the Nile, to them too they attributed a kind of divinity. They believed in the gods Tartak and Nivchaz and other kinds of animals. They also believed in certain animals as deities: the rooster, Nivchaz and Ashima and all sorts of deities, which are a goat and a rooster. The Egyptians believed in a sheep and the Indians believe in a cow, and so on. So they also believed that the sea monster, the sea monsters found in Egypt, are a kind of deity. And they believed that there was one sea monster that was greater than all of them there in the Nile, and he was, as it were, the god of them all, ruling over all, and he created himself and created the river. This is what they believed.
Now he compares Pharaoh, as it were, to that great sea monster. Why? Because Pharaoh too had those same aspects. Pharaoh had in the land the power and dominion that they attributed to the great sea monster found in the Nile; Pharaoh had such rule here in the land. Another matter: Pharaoh crouches in the midst of his rivers, meaning within all of the land of Egypt and all the rivers in it. He is certain that everything belongs to him, and not only that, but he even boasts that he himself created the river and that he also created himself. This is what he says: my river is mine, and I made myself. My river is mine, the river is mine, I created it. And another thing, I made myself, I also created myself. Well, a little question: tell me, Pharaoh, before you created yourself, did you exist or not? I do not know, just a point to ponder, yes? If you did not exist, then how did you create yourself? Well, apparently Pharaoh was not built for questions that were too deep, and apparently his people were not so intelligent as to ask the right questions. And even if someone did ask, apparently he would not receive quite the right answers. But in any case, this is what he sold to his people: my river is mine, and I, I am a god. Fine, but this god, what happens, there are needs, one must relieve himself. He needs to relieve himself, so he goes and secretly pollutes the river. Luckily for him the Green Party did not operate back then, because they would have arrested him for polluting the streams, and so no one knew that in fact this god, it is unpleasant to say, also has some excretions now and then. In any case, this was Pharaoh's conception, and this is how Pharaoh sold it to his people.
We must know that what I just said is really the interpretation familiar to everyone. But we must know that the plain-sense commentators actually do not go in this direction. The plain-sense commentators understand what is written, my river is mine and I made myself, to mean I made and prepared for myself the river in order to irrigate my land. That is the meaning of "I made myself." "I made myself" means I prepared it for myself, that is "I made myself," not that I made myself, but rather my river is mine and I made it, as in I made it for myself. That is the meaning of "I made myself," I made the river for myself. Another explanation is given by the Radak: "I made myself" means I made it, I made myself into a great and exalted king. What does this mean? My wisdom, my talent, my power, this is what made me so great, so I made myself. In this sense of, I created my own great power, but not in the sense of, I created myself. So too says Targum Yonatan: "and I made myself," the kingdom is mine and I conquered it. The kingdom is mine and I conquered. But not in the sense of, I created myself. But there is no one, as I said, the accepted interpretation on everyone's lips is specifically the interpretation of the Malbim, even though it is interesting that this is not the plain-sense interpretation of "I made myself," because to believe that he really made himself is a bit hard to accept. But this is how the Malbim explains it, and as I said, this is the interpretation familiar to everyone.
And I will place hooks in your jaws, and I will make the fish of your rivers cling to your scales, and I will bring you up from the midst of your rivers, and all the fish of your rivers will cling to your scales. The Malbim says: Egypt was destroyed several times. At first Pharaoh had great dominion; he ruled up to the great river, the Euphrates River. We saw that Nevuchadnetzar came and struck him when Yehoyachin reigned, as appears in Melachim II chapter 24. In the fourth year of Yehoyakim he was struck again at Karkemish, as appears in Yirmiyahu chapter 46. The third time, when they besieged Yerushalayim, he also went out and was also struck. All these blows had a common denominator: Pharaoh was outside his own country. He went out of his country to fight, and then they struck him. About this he states the metaphor here, and I will place hooks in your jaws. When they wanted to draw out a fish, they would insert a kind of hook into the jaws and with it draw it out. This is what he says here too. Since the Holy One, blessed be He, wished to bring Pharaoh down outside his land, therefore "I will place hooks in your jaws" in order to draw you and pull you outside. And since he would not want to go out on his own, then, as it were, just as a fish is pulled out by force, and here he is the fish, he is the great sea monster, he compared him to a fish, and so He draws him and pulls him out by Hashem's decree, and the point was to punish him. Now He says to him: you will not go out alone, but you will go out together with all your officers and warriors. This is, and I will make the fish of your rivers cling to your scales. The meaning is that he has, as it were, his scales, and he will make the fish of his rivers cling to them. The fish of his rivers are the important ones, the officers of the kingdom; they too will go out together with him. And I will bring you up from the midst of your rivers and all the fish of your rivers. What does this mean? It means I will bring you outside your land, because in the land he had some measure of security, but outside his land it is always harder to fight when you are not on your home field, so there he was less secure. And then he is like, the Malbim says, a fish that was taken out of the water onto dry land. This is the idea of, I brought you outside your land. And this expresses a certain weakness. And I will also bring up the fish of your rivers that cling to your scales; they too will be brought up. So this is the meaning of, and I will bring you up from the midst of your rivers and all the fish of your rivers that cling to your scales. Because there is really a repetition here, and this repetition is puzzling. "And I will make the fish of your rivers cling to your scales," and afterward "all the fish of your rivers will cling to your scales." You already made them cling. Why say it again? Rather no, the meaning is: I will bring you up out of your rivers to fight outside your land, you and all the fish of your rivers that cling to your scales. All those clinging to you, those officers and important ones, they too will be brought up together with you. And the Malbim always says, "fish" (dagat) is an expression of multitude, as in "and the fish that were in the river died," speaking of a multitude of fish.
And I will cast you into the wilderness, you and all the fish of your rivers; upon the open field you will fall, you will not be gathered nor collected; to the beasts of the earth and to the birds of the sky I have given you for food. The Radak here too explains, and I will cast you into the wilderness, which is the same matter of the metaphor we discussed earlier, since fish do not live in the wilderness. So he means to say to you: so too the Egyptians will die by the sword upon the open field when they go out to fight with the Kasdim, and there they will become food for the beast of the field and the bird of the sky. There you will die like the fish, that when they leave the water into the wilderness, there they die. The Malbim explains that there his army will be scattered and fall upon the open field, because as we explained, the war will not be within his own land, which is a fortified city, but rather it will be on the open field. And you will not be gathered nor collected. The Malbim asks: what is the difference between gathering (le'esof) and collecting (lekabetz)? The Malbim explains that in the holy tongue lekabetz means things that are scattered, you gather them together. In contrast, le'esof means to return them back to their place. We say, for example, if a shepherd wants to concentrate his flock, I would say he collects (mekabetz) them. If he wants to return them to the pen, he gathers (osef) them. "They will not be gathered home." To gather is always to return to the source, to the base, to the place from which they went out. In contrast, to collect means only to gather them one by one. That is the expression of collecting. The Malbim says here: fish are usually first collected, meaning the fisherman collects the fish, makes a pile, and afterward gathers them home. Here he says: not only will you not be gathered home, but you will not even be collected, you will not even be gathered together, because the beast of the field will eat you all.
And all the inhabitants of Egypt will know that I am Hashem, because they were a staff of reed to the house of Yisrael. Hashem says: in this, my gain will be that all the inhabitants of Egypt will recognize that I am Hashem. They will recognize that this punishment is from Hashem, "He makes the nations great and destroys them," Hashem raises up the nation, because the fall from above is much harder. And afterward war will come upon him in his land, the Malbim says. Nevuchadnetzar will come to the border of Egypt, and there he will strike him in his own land, in Egypt. Here now he describes the first war, and he also explains its reason. The reason for the war is that they were a staff of reed to the house of Yisrael. More than once we have already seen, in Sefer Melachim and elsewhere, that Yisrael relied on the Egyptians, that the Egyptians would help them. And not only did they not help them, but they even added to them ruin and downfall, and especially also from the spiritual standpoint, that the very fact of turning to Egypt expressed a lack of faith, and that is already a downfall. Already in this was the downfall of Yisrael, because when you turn to Egypt you are saying there is a limit to Hashem's ability to save, so I have no problem, I have friends for this. For this I will turn to Pharaoh king of Egypt, he will redeem me, he will save me. They removed their hearts from Hashem and did not listen to Yirmiyahu, who warned them not to do so. And then you were a staff of reed. A reed is a weak thing, "reed and rush have withered," a crushed reed, a reed is something you cannot lean upon. You were a staff of reed to the house of Yisrael.
When they grasped you by the hand, you would splinter and tear open every shoulder of theirs, and when they leaned on you, you would break and make all their loins stand. Now he will describe the damage that he caused to the people of Yisrael when the people of Yisrael relied on him to save them. As we said, you are in the category of a reed, and not only a reed but a crushed reed, a broken reed, that when a person grasps the reed, the Gemara says a reed has splinters. If we take a rush reed, then above, if you break it, you will see it develops many sharp points; these are called splinters. And when a person wants to grasp it, these splinters pierce his hand. When they grasped you by the hand, you would splinter and tear open every shoulder of theirs. What needs understanding here: how did the shoulder get here? He should have said it would splinter their hand, but why does he speak of, and you tear open every shoulder of theirs? The Malbim explains that he compared him to a crushed reed, that when a person grasps it in his palm and he wants to threaten the person coming against him, what does he do? He draws the reed back to make it appear as if I am coming to strike you. Now, when he drew the reed back, since the reed is crushed, it split open his shoulder. Do you understand? The crushing of the reed and its points split open the shoulder of the one threatening. This is what he says, and you tear open every shoulder of theirs. His shoulder was splintered and split open, and this is when he wants to threaten with it. And afterward, and when they leaned on you, you would break. And if he even wants to lean on this staff, the staff will break entirely. What is, and you make all their loins stand? Some explain "and you make all their loins totter" (vehamadta), and "vehamadta" is like "vehim'adta," meaning "hama'adta" is you made fall, like one who stumbles and falls. But Rashi says that I see their words. In contrast, the interpretation more accepted here, as both the Malbim explains and Rashi explains, is that when a person stands firm in his place, he stands on his loins. So he says, and you make all their loins stand. The Malbim explains: when a person walks on his feet, the force of gravity is between the legs, from the power of the loins that hold the body upright. The loins hold the body. Think, if a person did not have loins, the person would fold and fall. What holds a person standing upright is the loins. If a person leans on a staff, what actually comes out? That he is not standing on his loins, but rather now he bends over and leans on the staff. The force of gravity is between the body and the support. What then happens? When the support breaks and falls, he falls. If he cannot hold with his loins, cannot stabilize himself, then the moment the support falls he falls together with it. What is then needed? He must then immediately strengthen his loins so that the body does not continue to lean after the support. The Malbim says, this is what is written here, and you make all their loins stand. They will have to make the loins stand with force and strength, because if not, this leaning on the staff will make them fall. What is the analogy? The Malbim says: at first, when they wanted to frighten the enemies by means of Pharaoh, when the king of Bavel besieged Yerushalayim, they in fact contacted Pharaoh so that Pharaoh would bring out his forces from Egypt, and then Nevuchadnetzar would be afraid. He would hear that a reinforcement army had come from Egypt to save us; this would deter him, and through this he would flee. There was really an intention here to frighten the enemy. This is what he explained earlier, that when one takes the staff to draw it back in order to frighten, as if I want to strike, then their shoulder will break. He says, through this every shoulder of theirs was split open. Why? Because then you had to pay Pharaoh a great fortune, a bribe to the king of Egypt, "they carry their wealth on the backs of young donkeys," and so on, "not for help but for shame," and so on. So this was at the beginning, when it was only a threat. Afterward it did not help you, because in practice you yourself had to go fight against them. And this is what he says, and you make all their loins stand. Now the people of Yisrael were forced to stand on their loins, and their legs, as we said, had already grown tired, had already failed; they had hoped there would be help for them, and here they were forced to stand on their own feet, in the place where they relied on Pharaoh and thought he would save them, in the end he did not become their salvation.
Rashi explains a different explanation. What is, and you tear open every shoulder of theirs? Rashi explains how, why the shoulder. So Rashi says, he paints a picture like this: a person is leaning on the support of the crushed reed, but since the reed breaks, then what happens to him? He falls. And since he falls, his shoulder falls onto the reed and is itself injured. And this is what he says, and you tear open every shoulder of theirs. After the staff breaks this way, then he falls upon it and his shoulder breaks and is injured by the crushed reed. This is the meaning of the matter of, you tear open every shoulder of theirs, the splinters enter his shoulders.
Therefore thus says Hashem Elohim: Behold I am bringing a sword upon you, and I will cut off from you man and beast. Therefore Nevuchadnetzar arrives at Egypt; this was after the destruction. Therefore he says, behold I am bringing a sword upon you, and through this the land of Egypt will become a desolation and a ruin, and they will know that I am Hashem, because he said, the river is mine and I made it. The land of Egypt will become a desolation and a ruin, and they will know that I am Hashem. In this they will recognize my divinity more than through my bringing the destroyer to their land. Why? Because when you bring the destroyer to their land, as we said, here the downfall is greater, because a king in his own land has greater power, he has fortified cities, he has his forces, and here in any case the destroyer will come to their land, the fall will be more powerful. The Malbim explains: and now he will explain to us the third destruction, the general destruction that came upon Egypt. This was in the twenty seventh year of Nevuchadnetzar's reign, eighteen years after the destruction, when he had already received his punishment for helping the children of Yisrael, and this is now the new punishment; it is not for being a staff of crushed reed. The new punishment is for saying, because he said, the river is mine and I made it. Since he still attributed all his power to the river and to himself, and that he also created the river, that is to say Egypt had not yet been completely nullified, and he still felt those feelings of a god, therefore he still needed to bring upon him a further downfall. And the land of Egypt will become a desolation and a ruin. And why? Because he said, the river is mine and I made it, according to the interpretations we explained above about what "the river is mine and I made it" means, either I made my kingdom, or as the Malbim explained, I made myself.
What is "a desolation and a ruin"? The Malbim explains the difference between desolation (shemamah) and ruin (chorbah), that ruin usually applies more to cities. I do not say "a wilderness ruin," because nothing was destroyed there. I say the wilderness is desolate. I say the land is desolate, forsaken, there are no crops in it. But cities, it is more fitting to speak about them with "ruin." And generally desolation is more than ruin. "To ruins, waste, desolation." The addition that follows always increases. So there was not only waste, there was also desolation. Because with ruin there are still stones, there still remains, so to speak, something. But when they say desolation, this means total obliteration, in order to describe the complete destruction. Therefore it is written, and the land of Egypt will become a desolation and a ruin. That is, the less inhabited places will be in the category of desolation, and the inhabited places will be a ruin.
Therefore behold I am against you and against your rivers, and I will make the land of Egypt into utter ruins, waste and desolation, from Migdol Seveneh to the border of Kush. Therefore behold I am against you, meaning bringing upon you the complete destruction, as we said, in year twenty seven of Nevuchadnetzar. And therefore here he says, utter ruins, waste and desolation, which means what, "utter ruins, waste," what is the repetition? A very great destruction, more than what we saw above, "desolation and ruin," but rather utter ruins, waste and desolation. This means an intensification of the destruction, and it will include the entire land, from Migdol Seveneh to the border of Kush, which means including all of Egypt. To that extent.
No foot of man will pass through it, and no foot of beast will pass through it, and it will not be inhabited for forty years. No foot of man will pass through it and no foot of beast will pass through it; this will be a true and complete destruction, that it will be like a parched wilderness. And just as in a parched wilderness it has no beasts, and certainly people have nothing to seek there, therefore they do not pass through it, so too beasts will not be seen there, since the place will be completely desolate. How long will this be? It will be forty years. It will not be inhabited for forty years.
Rashi brings the Midrash. The Midrash says, there are several opinions in the Midrash, but this is one of the opinions, this is the opinion of the Sages. Forty two years of famine were decreed in Pharaoh's dream in Egypt. Do you hear? When we read the plain sense of the verses, we see seven years of famine. The Sages say not seven, forty two. Yes? Not that we are begrudging, that Hashem should add for them more and more years of famine, but how did they arrive at forty two? How, how is the calculation? Chazal say, corresponding to the three times that the dream is written. Seven cows and seven bad ears of grain, this is written three times. If we do three times seven, we get twenty one. Fine, after that he sees it, he tells it to Yosef, yes? So we now get, he saw and told it to Yosef, so the seeing is one more time, the telling to Yosef is one more, we got two. That is, another fourteen. From twenty one and another fourteen, how many do we have? Thirty five. Now he told him, the seven lean and bad cows, and so on, again we see another seven, we got together forty two. Notice, the seeing we count on its own, and why? Because the three times we counted at the beginning is what was written. It is not now speaking about the seeing that he sees; the very seeing is another count on its own, the very telling is another count on its own, and Yosef, who interprets the dream for him, again repeats the account, the seven lean and bad cows, he again repeats the matter of the seven years of famine, that is another seven, together we got forty two of famine. The Midrash says, in practice they had only two years of famine, because we all know that when Yaakov went down to Egypt the Nile rose toward him and the famine ceased. There remained for them a debt of forty years. What about those forty years? These forty years are now being repaid for them. So say Chazal. These are the forty years that Egypt will be ruined and uninhabited and will be desolate, which means complete famine, nothing grows there in Egypt, and it tells you this is the forty years that Egypt needed to complete on account of that dream.
And I will make the land of Egypt a desolation in the midst of desolate lands, and its cities in the midst of ruined cities will be a desolation for forty years, and I will scatter Egypt among the nations and disperse them among the lands. And I will make the land of Egypt a desolation. Besides this, the Malbim says, there will also be destruction in the surroundings of Egypt. Notice, to the extent that Egypt will be a desolation in the midst of desolate lands. What does this mean? It could have been a desolation, but the lands around you are flourishing and thriving lands, and then your situation is not so bad, because you can receive food and more from the surrounding lands, as in the land of Canaan there was a famine and they went down to Egypt to buy grain. But here he says, there will be destruction also in the surroundings of Egypt. And I will make the land of Egypt a desolation in the midst of desolate lands. The lands around it too will be desolate. Sometimes it can very well be that the land is desolate, but the cities are not ruined. For example, as you see an oasis. The whole desert is desolate, suddenly in the middle there is some oasis. So perhaps you would think that here too it will be like this reality? He tells you no, and its cities in the midst of ruined cities will be. The cities too will be ruined. And not only that, but they will also be in the midst of ruined cities, meaning the neighboring cities around too will be ruined. And then again this makes it harder, because if the cities around are built, then at least they will try to help build this city. But if it is ruined and in the midst of ruined cities, all the cities around it too are ruined; it is impossible for them to build it since they themselves are ruined. And in any case he says, if so you would say it is equal to all the countries around it, because it is desolate and it is amid desolate ones, and it is ruined and it is amid ruins. He tells you no, know that its desolation and destruction will be greater. That although it is in the midst of desolate lands, in any case the proportion of its desolation will be greater than their desolation. Why? To the extent that they will say, as it were, they are considered no longer desolate relative to it. It will be so desolate that it will be called "the desolate land," the land that is the desolate land. And this will continue for forty years. And besides this he tells you, know also that those who escape from there, those who still survive, will not settle in one place but will be scattered among the nations, which is always a harder blow. Because if we went out from our land but concentrated in a certain place, then we still preserved our identity somewhere. But if the Egyptians there were scattered among the nations, that is to say they will assimilate completely. For thus says Hashem Elohim, at the end of forty years...