Ver. 1. In the twelfth month.] About a year and a half after the city was taken.
Ver. 2. Take up a lamentation,] i.e., A lamentable prophecy, destructive to the Egyptians; and it is very likely that they heard of it but heeded it not; tanquam monstra marina Dei verba praetereuntes. Thou art like a young lion.] For pride, fierceness, and cruelty. And thou art as a whale.] Or, Crocodile; thou domineerest over sea and land, far and wide; thou playest rex. Thou camest forth with thy rivers.] With the arms of thy Nile into the midland sea, insanis bellis inquietans omnia, breeding a great bustle in the countries near adjoining.
Ver. 3. I will therefore spread out my net.] Thou shalt be taken in an evil net, when thou little thinkest of it: “Evil shall hunt the violent man, to overthrow him.” (Psalms 140:11) Look how Leo cassibus irretitus ait, Si praescivissem; and as the whale, enclosed by fishers, is lugged to land, done to death, cleft in pieces with axes, his flesh being made a prey for birds and beasts, his blood far and near drenching the earth, so shall it fare with Pharaoh and his forces.
Ver. 4. Then will I leave thee upon the land.] As whales are sometimes left by an ebb, while they pursue lesser fishes. There was one so taken near Greenwich lately, a piece of whose flesh was showed unto me. In June 1658.
Ver. 5. With thy height.] Celsitudine tua; with thy glory, which thou holdest dearer than thy flesh or life. Oecolamp.
Ver. 6. I will also water with thy blood.] Instead of thy river Nile. The land wherein thou swimmest.] Egypt, where thou sportest, as the whale doth in the mighty waters. Even to the mountains.] A most elegant hyperbole, the like whereto see 2 Kings 21:16. Natabunt colles et valles cruore tuo.
Ver. 7. And when I shall put thee out.] Or, Extinguish thee, who art for thy power and glory as one of the world’s great luminaries. I will cover the heaven, &c.] So great a fume, or rather so vile a snuff, shall exhale, that the heavens shall seem to be muffled, &c. It shall be once again deep darkness over all the land of Egypt; another hyperbole. Hypallage poetica.
Ver. 8. All the bright lights of heaven.] See Ezekiel 32:7. All this shall befall the world really and without a hyperbole at the last day (Matthew 24:29) “ Impiaque aeternam patientur saecula noctem. ”
Ver. 9. I will also vex.] Or, Grieve. See Ecclesiastes 7:3, where the same word signifieth anger and sorrow. Nebuchadnezzar’s growing greatness shall be a cut and a corrosive to them.
Ver. 10. When I shall brandish my sword.] As fetching my blow at them too, and aiming where to hit them. Every man for his own life.] Which he knows he hath forfeited, and hath now great cause to fear, since his neighbour’s house is on fire. Iam proximus ardet. -Ucalegon.
Ver. 11. The sword of the King of Babylon.] Here is that delivered plainly which was before parabolically.
Ver. 12. By the swords of the mighty.] Or, Of the heroes, or giants. The terrible of the nations.] Grassatores, as Munster hath it; inexpugnabiles, as the Vulgate; such as with whom there is no dealing.
Ver. 13. All the beasts thereof.] Egypt, a most moist and fat country, was full of cattle.
Ver. 14. Then will I make their waters deep.] There shall not be men left to drive them by ditches and channels into their grounds and pastures, for the making of them fruitful. And cause their rivers to run like oil,] i.e., Smoothly and silently. “ Lene fluit Nilus, sed cunctis amnibus extat Utilior, nullas confessus murmure vires.” - Claudian.
Ver. 15. When I shall make the land…desolate.] See here the sad effects of sin, and beware. Then shall they know that I am the Lord.] Pleraque supra habuimus: ideo sum brevior, saith Lavater on Ezekiel 32:12.
Ver. 16. This is the lamentation.] And this is the epilogue of this former prophecy; the latter followeth, being of the self-same argument—viz., a funeral dirge and exequies over Egypt.
Ver. 17. In the fifteenth day of the month,] i.e., Of the twelfth month, (Ezekiel 32:1) and about a fortnight after the former prophecy. God loves to foretell, and to do it often.
Ver. 18. Wail for the multitude.] Prophesy their destruction, but do it not without grief and regret. Cast them down.] Do thou foretell it, and I will not fail to fulfil it. (Jeremiah 1:10) [See Trapp on “Jer 1:10”] Let them know that hell gapeth for them; and here I give thee the keys thereof. So God doth to every faithful minister; (Matthew 16:19) not to Peter only, nor to his pretended successor, the Pope, whom therefore Luther bravely slighted in these words of his, Contemptus est a me Romanus et favor et furor, -I care neither for the Pope’s favour nor frowns.
Ver. 19. Whom dost thou pass in beauty?] What art thou better than other thy compeers and complices in sin? Thou must also dance down to hell down to hell, with the rest. Be thou laid with the uncircumcised.] Strangers to the covenant, whereof circumcision was a seal Sinners the Chaldee here calleth them, such as the devil sweeps. They are his birds, saith Mr Bradford, martyr, whom, when he hath well fed, he will broach them and eat them, chew them and champ them, world without end, in eternal woe and misery. Serm. of Repent., p. 70.
Ver. 20. They shall fall.] Carcases have their names both in Greek and Latin from falling. “ Fit subito funus, qui modo virus erat. ” We wonder now and then at the sudden death of a man. In war many thousands exhale their breath without so much as, Lord have mercy on us! Death heweth its way through a wood of men in a minute of time, &c. πτωμα. Cadaver.
Ver. 21. The strong among the mighty.] Who might have seen many fair summers, had they not been cut off by Pharaoh’s sword. Shall speak to him out of the midst of hell.] What they say to him, see Isaiah 14:10, where we have the like personification in poetry.
Ver. 22. Ashur is there.] To wit, in the belly of hell, among the uncircumcised, as Lazarus and other saints are in the bosom of Abraham, the place of bliss. Slain they were with the sword; but that was but a beginning of their sorrows, a trap door to eternal torment. Virgil, by a like figure, brings in Aeneas going down to hell, and there seeing Agamemnon, Dido, the Titans, Cyclopes, and other tyrants.
Ver. 23. Whose graves are set in the sides of the pit.] In the bottom of the burning lake, which from the high top of a kingdom is a foul fall. Their being there buried may import that they shall never come out. Which caused terror.] As breathing nothing but blood and slaughter, raising a tempest wherever they came, so that they became terrores terrae, terrors of the earth, as dreadful as devils.
Ver. 24. There is Elam.] The Persians, who in the reign of Cyaxares had been subdued by the Scythians, and slain in great number. (Jeremiah 49:34, &c.) Into the nether parts of the earth.] Into hell, as that rich glutton in Luke 16:23, where our Saviour seemeth to allude to this place, Yet have they borne their shame.] Carried the matter of it to hell with them, where is perpetual shame and confusion, beside the vexing snuff they have left behind them upon earth. Jun.
Ver. 25. They have set her a bed,] i.e., The devils have set the Persian multitude a bed, but an uneasy one, such as they set for that rich wretch, (Luke 12:19,20) who thought to take his ease, but was not suffered. With all her multitude.] The grave is the “congregation house of all living.” (Job 30:23) Hell is of many dead, that die in their sins. He is put in the midst.] In the hottest fire of hell.
Ver. 26. There is Meshech and Tubal,] i.e., Say some, the Cappadocians and Spaniards; others, the Scythians and Sarmatians. And all her multitude.] See Ezekiel 32:25.
Ver. 27. Which are gone down to hell with their weapons of war.] They died not gloriously as conquerors, nor were buried triumphantly with their arms under their heads, as valiant warriors were wont to be; sed ingloria vita recessit, but they died like dogs and were basely buried, and yet that was not the worst of it either. But their iniquities shall be upon their bones.] They shall rue for their cruelty and bloodshed. These shall be as a murdering weapon in their bones (Psalms 42:10) throughout all eternity.
Ver. 28. Yea, thou shalt be broken.] Thou, O Pharaoh, shalt have a deeper degree of torment in hell. Potentes potenter torquebuntur.
Ver. 29. They shall lie with the uncircumcised.] Though they were circumcised, as now the Turks are, yet that shall not profit them. Faciunt et vespae favos, et “ Simia quam similis turpissima bestia nobis! ”
Ver. 30. There be the princes of the north,] i.e., Saith Junius, The Syrians, Tyrians, and others. And all the Zidonians.] All the hunters, saith the Vulgate, taking the word appellatively. Which are gone down.] The same again, ad maius pathos.
Ver. 31. Pharaoh shall see them.] This is the epilogue or preclose of this doleful ditty. And shall be comforted.] This was a miserable comfort, the Like whereto is that of some profane persons among us, who, when threatened for their foul practices, use to reply, If we do go to hell, yet we shall have company.
Ver. 32. For I have caused my terror.] By Pharaoh’s exemplary punishment. This will make good men tremble at my judgments, and bad men beware how they come under my wrath.