Ezekiel 29:4-5 - Exposition

I will put hooks in thy jaws . So Herodotus (2. 70) describes the way in which the Egyptians caught the crocodile by baiting a large hook with swine ' s flesh. Jomard ('Description de l ' Egypt, ' 1.27) gives a similar account (comp. also Job 41:1 , Job 41:2 , though there the capture seems represented as an almost impossible achievement; probably the process had become more familiar since the date of that book). The fish that stick to the scales of the crocodile are, of course, in the interpretation of the parable, either the Egyptian army itself or the nations that had thrown themselves into alliance with Egypt, and the destruction of the two together in the wilderness points to some great overthrow of the Egyptian army and its auxiliaries, probably to that of the expedition against Cyrene (Herod; 2.161) which led to the revolt of Amasis, and which would take the wilderness west of the Nile on its line of march. The beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven (we note the recurrence of the old Homeric phrase, as in 'Iliad,' 1.4, 5) should devour the carcasses of the slain, the corpses of the fallen and prostrate nation.