Verse 3
3. Great dragon In the Chinese Book of Changes the dragon is the symbol of the sage and the king (Edkins, Ancient Symbolism, p. 9). The dragon of the rivers (or, Nile canals, Exodus 7:17-24) must be the crocodile, which, even to this day is called Pharaoh by the fellaheen. (Compare Job 41:13; Isaiah 27:1.)
My river is mine own, and I have made it The canals of Egypt are still called “rivers” by the Egyptians. A great canal between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea had been projected from ancient times and had been almost completed a generation earlier than this. (See author’s Ancient Egypt, p. 86.) This verse may refer to some such great enterprise of Hophra’s, or it may refer to the whole network of irrigating streams considered as a unit. Herodotus, writing of this same king, says (ii, 169) that he “believed there was not a god who could cast him down from his eminence,” so firmly was he established in his kingdom.
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