Every King in Sheol Was Comforted Except Pharaoh

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The Treasuries Pharaoh Threw Open

Before the chariots ever reached the water, Pharaoh gathered his horsemen and warned them. "I know these Hebrews," he said. "They carried off your silver and your gold when they left. Do not let your hearts run after the plunder. Ride to kill, not to gather."

Then he did a strange thing. He unbarred the sealed storehouses that Joseph had filled generations before, the vaults that had held Egypt together through seven years of famine, and he let his soldiers strip them bare. "Take it," he told them. "Take the silver, take the gold, and hang it on your horses." So they braided treasure into the manes and buckled it across the flanks, until every animal in the army glittered. All the horses of Pharaoh's chariot rode out wearing the wealth of Egypt on their backs.

They did not know they were dressing the plunder for someone else.

The Knot God Tied at the Water

When the sea split and Israel walked down between the standing walls of water, the Egyptians came after them onto the bare seabed, whips high, wheels churning. Bar Kappara taught what happened next, and it is a small thing to say and a terrible thing to watch. The Holy One reached into that charging line and tied each horse to the man who rode it. Not with rope. With judgment. Beast and rider fused into one doomed creature, unable to part, welded together for the drowning.

Then the walls came down.

The gold that was meant to buy a slaughter dragged its wearers under. Each horse sank with its rider knotted to it, and the treasure Pharaoh had draped across their flanks pulled them faster toward the bottom. When the water stilled it rolled the wealth of Egypt up onto the shore where Israel stood, and Israel gathered it off the sand. The plunder Pharaoh had forbidden his men to chase had chased them instead, into the hands of the people they meant to kill. That was the spoil of this world, and a promise lay folded behind it, that whatever the nations pile up is stored for Israel in the end.

Pharaoh Goes Down Among the Slain

The story does not end on the beach. It follows Pharaoh downward, into the pit where kings go when the sword is finished with them. The Holy One turned to the prophet Ezekiel and gave him a task no one wants. "Son of man, wail over the multitude of Egypt," He said, and Ezekiel raised the death-cry over an army already at the bottom of the water and already on its way to Sheol (the land of the dead).

Down there the drowned came ashore in a different country, a gray one, and their king came with them. Pharaoh, who had ridden out with treasure on his horses, walked into the land of the dead stripped of everything, and even there he tried to keep his height. He looked around at the corpses and lifted his chin. "Shall I go down and lie beside him?" he asked, as if there were a lower shelf reserved for lesser men and a better place kept for a king like himself.

Whom Are You More Beautiful Than

The answer came without gentleness. "Whom do you surpass in pleasantness?" the Holy One asked him. "Whom are you more beautiful than? Are you finer than the king of Assyria? Than the king of Tyre, than the king of Sidon? Go down, then, and be laid among the uncircumcised." And Pharaoh went down.

Sheol, it turned out, was crowded with royalty. There lay Assyria and her whole assembly around her grave. There lay Elam and all her roaring multitude. There lay Meshech and Tubal with their hordes. There lay Edom, her kings and all her princes laid out among the slain. There lay the princes of the north, every one of them brought down by the sword they had trusted.

The One Comfort Sheol Was Refusing Him

The pit keeps a custom for its kings. A fallen ruler, arriving among the dead, lifts his eyes and sees the others already there, Assyria and Elam and Edom and all the rest, and something in him eases. He is not the only one the sword unmade. The prophet had spoken the exact word for it: Pharaoh shall see them, and he shall be consoled over all his multitude, over all his army slain by the sword. Every king who comes down gets that cold mercy. The sight of his equals is his comfort.

Pharaoh reached for it. He looked at the buried kings the way a drowning man looks at a rope, waiting for the ordinary consolation of the pit to close over him too, to be told he was no worse than Assyria.

The Holy One did not let it come. "Pharaoh," He said, "you are not to be consoled for what you did to My children." And the comfort that every other king received in the land of the dead was held back from him alone, so that he lay among the slain he had led there and found no rest in their company.

There was a single word behind it. The verse said God did not lead Israel by the near road, va'lo nacham, and the same three letters that spell "led" also spell "comforted." Read the second way, the sentence turns on Pharaoh: God did not comfort him. He drowned his horsemen tied to their horses, he walked into Sheol (the underworld of the dead) trying to keep his crown, and the one kindness the dead give their kings was the one thing he was denied.