I will strew your flesh upon the mountains and fill the valleys with your carcass.
God's word over Egypt's king is a lament, sung the way mourners sing over a coffin. This verse is one line of it: the great river-monster comes out of the water, and his body ends up spread over a whole country. Why does God lament the fall of a proud enemy? And what was Pharaoh guilty of, that God describes his ruin in such detail?
Place in the chapter
Pharaoh appears here under two animals at once:
William KellyIt was not enough to have set forth the fall of the Assyrian as a pattern of Egypt's ruin. The Spirit of God adds in conclusion a fresh message in two parts. The first part, in the first half of this chapter, sets out the coming catastrophe of Pharaoh under the figures of a lion and a crocodile (or a river dragon, not "a whale"). He was once the terror of nations. Now he is caught, killed and exposed before all, and this under the king of Babylon...
Our verse belongs to the chapter's opening section:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinVerses 1-10 contain the lamentation over Pharaoh. Then comes the final announcement of the sword of the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, in verses 11-16.
Flesh on the mountains
The creature of the river ends up everywhere except the river. One writer follows the whole sequence, and shows whose hand is behind the armies:
Numerical Bible NotesLike the restless monster that stands for him, he could only stir up his own waters with his feet, and foul his streams. God, in fact, was spreading His net over him. The human instruments were only means in His hands. By them He would bring him up out of his streams and cast him upon the open field, and fill the birds of heaven and the beasts of the earth with his great bulk. His flesh would lie upon the mountains and fill the valleys. His blood would water the land, and his dead bodies would fill the rivers where he had been swimming.
The size that made him fearsome is now the size of the mess. And the country his body is spread over had built its whole life around burial:
Numerical Bible NotesFrom the earliest times Egypt was a place of death rather than of life — as the earth at large very much is. Egypt is emphatically the land of tombs. The book it left to the world is a book of the dead. Their great men built their tombs with more extravagance than their palaces, for they knew they would use them longer.
The boast behind the ruin
Pharaoh had boasted that the Nile was his own and that he had made it. One writer turns that boast around:
Numerical Bible NotesIn practice it is the reverse of this; it is the river that has made him. Even the name of the first father of the Egyptians, Mizraim, comes to him, you might say, from the land to which he owes everything.
A second cause is added to that pride, and it concerns God's own people:
Numerical Bible NotesSecond, Egypt has been a staff that breaks under Israel; a staff of reed. It offered much but never kept its promises, and it brought only ruin to all who trusted it... So God Himself must break, for Israel's sake, this staff that they leaned upon.
Why a lament and not a cheer
This word is not a victory song. The date matters, and so does the grief that comes where blessing was due:
Numerical Bible NotesWe now come to the twelfth year and the twelfth month. This period speaks of the full display of God's ways in government. Here there should be only blessing. Instead there comes a voice of lamentation. It reminds us of the real tears wept on earth by One who was God Himself made known in flesh, wept over those who had despised His gracious invitations... The creatures that God has made must always be objects of interest to Him.
The lesson turned on the reader
Egypt stands for more than one nation's fall:
Numerical Bible NotesEgypt is everywhere in Scripture the type of that fallen condition out of which we have been redeemed. The one whom the life-giving Spirit of God has awakened finds himself held captive in that condition. He must be redeemed out of it, as God redeemed Israel out of Egypt.
Summary
- Claim. Pharaoh said the river was his and he had made it; in truth the river had made him.
- Catch. God spreads the net; Babylon's armies are only tools in His hands to lift the monster out of his own streams.
- Scatter. A land full of tombs, and its king gets none — his flesh on the mountains, the valleys filled, his blood watering the land he swam in.
- Staff. Egypt broke like a reed under everyone who leaned on it, so God broke it for His people's sake.
- Song. It all comes as a lament, not a cheer, because the creatures God has made never stop being of interest to Him.