Ezekiel 29:3 - Exposition

The great dragon . The word is cognate with that used in Genesis 1:21 for the great "whales," monsters of the deep. The "dragon," probably the crocodile of the Nile (compare the description of "leviathan" in Job 41:1-34 .) had come to be the received prophetic symbol of Egypt ( Psalms 74:13 ; Isaiah 27:1 ; Isaiah 51:9 ). The rivers are the Nile-branches of the Delta. My river is mine own . The words probably imply that Hophra, like his grandfather Necho, in his plan of a canal from the Nile to the Red Sea, had given much time and labor to irrigation works in Lower Egypt. The boast which rose to his lips reminds us of that of Nebuchadnezzar as he looked on Babylon ( Daniel 4:30 ). He, like the kings of Tyre and Babylon, was tempted to a self-apotheosis, and thought of himself as the Creator of his own power. The words of Herodotus, in which he says that Apries believed himself so firmly established in his kingdom that there was no god that could cast him out of it, present a suggestive parallel.