Ezekiel 32:5

And I will lay thy flesh upon the mountains, and fill the valleys with thy height.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

32:1-16 It becomes us to weep and tremble for those who will not weep and tremble for themselves. Great oppressors are, in God's account, no better than beasts of prey. Those who admire the pomp of this world, will wonder at the ruin of that pomp; which to those who know the vanity of all things here below, is no surprise. When others are ruined by sin, we have to fear, knowing ourselves guilty. The instruments of the desolation are formidable. And the instances of the desolation are frightful. The waters of Egypt shall run like oil, which signifies there should be universal sadness and heaviness upon the whole nation. God can soon empty those of this world's goods who have the greatest fulness of them. By enlarging the matters of our joy, we increase the occasions of our sorrow. How weak and helpless, as to God, are the most powerful of mankind! The destruction of Egypt was a type of the destruction of the enemies of Christ.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The prophet passes from the image of the crocodile to that of dead bodies of the slain heaped up on the land. Some render "height," "foulness."

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

5. thy height—thy hugeness [Fairbairn]. The great heap of corpses of thy forces, on which thou pridest thyself. "Height" may refer to mental elevation, as well as bodily [Vatablus].

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Will lay; throw or cast.

Thy flesh; the carcasses of thy slain men and soldiers.

Upon the mountains; whither they retired for safety. Fill the valleys; not so fill them as to equal them in height with hills, but we say a man fills a place who scatters much or many things though but on the surface; so here valleys filled.

With thy height; with the carcasses of thy princes, as the Chaldee paraphrast I think hits right; and so the French, et remplirai les vallies de tee glorieux qu’ on aura abbatus.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And I will lay thy flesh upon the mountains,.... The remainder of it, left by the birds and beasts of prey, and who might carry it thither; or it intends such of the Egyptians who should flee to the mountains for safety, but should fall by the hands of the enemy there. So the Targum,

"and I will give the flesh of thy slain upon the mountains.''

And fill the valleys with thy height; his huge army, and with which he prided and lifted up himself, and thought himself safe in; which should fall in such great numbers as to cover the plains and valleys where the battle was fought. Jarchi observes, that the word for "height" has with some the signification of "worms"; and so the Syriac version renders it, "and the valleys shall be filled with thy worms"; bred in the carcasses of the slain: and so the Vulgate Latin version, "with corrupt matter"; such as issues out of putrefied wounds. The Targum very rightly paraphrases it,

"the valleys shall be filled with the carcasses of thine army.''

Geneva Study Bible

And I will lay thy flesh upon the mountains, and fill the valleys {d} with thy height.

(d) With heaps of the carcass of your army.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

5. Cf. Ezekiel 31:12 Other suggestions for “height” have little probability.

Ezekiel 32:5

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The destruction of Pharoah. - Ezekiel 32:2. Son of man, raise a lamentation over Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and say to him, Thou wast compared to a young lion among the nations, and yet wast like a dragon in the sea; thou didst break forth in thy streams, and didst trouble the waters with thy feet, and didst tread their streams. Ezekiel 32:3. Thus saith the Lord Jehovah, Therefore will I spread out my net over thee in the midst of many nations, that they may draw thee up in my yarn; Ezekiel 32:4. And will cast thee upon the land, hurl thee upon the surface of the field, and will cause all the birds of the heaven to settle upon thee, and the beasts of the whole earth to satisfy themselves with thee. Ezekiel 32:5. Thy flesh will I put upon the mountains, and fill the valleys with thy funeral heap. Ezekiel 32:6. I will saturate the earth with thine outflow of thy blood even to the mountains, and the low places shall become full of thee. - This lamentation begins, like others, with a picture of the glory of the fallen king. Hitzig objects to the ordinary explanation of the words כּפיר גּוים נדמיתה, λέοντι ἐθνῶν ὡμοιώθης (lxx), leoni gentium assimilatus es (Vulg.), on the ground that the frequently recurring נדמה would only have this meaning in the present passage, and that נמשׁל, which would then be synonymous, is construed in three other ways, but not with the nominative. For these reasons he adopts the rendering, "lion of the nations, thou belongest to death." But it would be contrary to the analogy of all the קינות to commence the lamentation with such a threat; and Hitzig's objections to the ordinary rendering of the words will not bear examination. The circumstance that the Niphal נדמה is only met with here in the sense of ὁμοιοῦσθαι, proves nothing; for דּמה has this meaning in the Kal, Piel, and Hithpael, and the construction of the Niphal with the accusative (not nominative, as Hitzig says) may be derived without difficulty from the construction of the synonymous נמשׁל with כ. But what is decisive in favour of this rendering is the fact that the following clause is connected by means of the adversative ואתּה (but thou), which shows that the comparison of Pharaoh to a תּנּים forms an antithesis to the clause in which he is compared to a young lion. If נדמית 'כּפיר ג contained a declaration of destruction, not only would this antithesis be lost, but the words addressed to it as a lion of the nations would float in the air and be used without any intelligible meaning. The lion is a figurative representation of a powerful and victorious ruler; and כּפיר גּוים is really equivalent to אל גּוים in Ezekiel 31:11.

Pharaoh was regarded as a mighty conqueror of the nations, "though he was rather to be compared to the crocodile, which stirs up the streams, the fresh waters, and life-giving springs of the nations most perniciously with mouth and feet, and renders turbid all that is pure" (Ewald). תּנּים, as in Ezekiel 29:3. Ewald and Hitzig have taken offence at the words תּגח בּנהרתיך, "thou didst break forth in thy streams," and alter בּנהרתיך retla d into בּנחרתיך, with thy nostrils (Job 41:12); but they have not considered that תּגח would be quite out of place with such an alteration, as גּיח in both the Kal and Hiphil (Judges 20:33) has only the intransitive meaning to break out. The thought is simply this: the crocodile lies in the sea, then breaks occasionally forth in its streams, and makes the waters and their streams turbid with its feet. Therefore shall Pharaoh also end like such a monster (Ezekiel 32:3-6). The guilt of Pharaoh did not consist in the fact that he had assumed the position of a ruler among the nations (Kliefoth); but in his polluting the water-streams, stirring up and disturbing the life-giving streams of the nations. God will take him in His net by a gathering of nations, and cause him to be drawn out of his element upon the dry land, where he shall become food to the birds and beasts of prey (cf. Ezekiel 29:4-5; Ezekiel 31:12-13). The words 'בּקהל עמּים ר are not to be understood as referring to the nations, as spectators of the event (Hvernick); but ב denotes the instrument, or medium employed, here the persons by whom God causes the net to be thrown, as is evident from the והעלוּך which follows. According to the parallelismus membrorum, the ἁπ. λεγ. רמוּת can only refer to the carcase of the beast, although the source from which this meaning of the word is derived has not yet been traced. There is no worth to be attached to the reading rimowt in some of the codices, as רמּה does not yield a suitable meaning either in the sense of reptile, or in that of putrefaction or decomposed bodies, which has been attributed to it from the Arabic. Under these circumstances we adhere to the derivation from רוּם, to be high, according to which רמוּת may signify a height or a heap, which the context defines as a funeral-pile. צפה, strictly speaking, a participle from צוּף, to flow, that which flows out, the outflow (Hitzig), is not to be taken in connection with ארץ, but is a second object to השׁקיתי; and the appended word מדּמך indicates the source whence the flowing takes place, and of what the outflow consists. אל ההרים, to the mountains, i.e., up to the top of the mountains. The thought in these verses is probably simply this, that the fall of Pharaoh would bring destruction upon the whole of the land of Egypt, and that many nations would derive advantage from his fall.