Every King in Sheol Was Comforted Except Pharaoh

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Gold Braided Into the Manes

Before the chariots 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 unbarred the sealed storehouses Joseph had filled in the famine years, the vaults that had held Egypt together, and he let his soldiers strip them. "Take it. Take the silver, take the gold, and hang it on your horses."

They braided treasure into the manes and buckled it across the flanks. Every animal 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.

Horse and Rider Tied as One

The sea split. Israel walked down between standing walls of water. The Egyptians came after them onto the bare seabed, whips high, wheels churning.

The Holy One reached into that charging line and tied each horse to the man who rode it. Not with rope. Beast and rider fused, unable to part, welded for the drowning.

Then the walls came down.

The gold meant to buy a slaughter dragged its wearers under. Each horse sank with its rider knotted to it, and the treasure on 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. Israel gathered it off the sand. The plunder Pharaoh had forbidden his men to chase had chased them instead.

Pharaoh Walks Into the Pit

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."

Ezekiel raised the death-cry over an army already at the bottom of the water and already on its way to Sheol (שאול), the land of the dead. Down there the drowned came ashore in a gray country, and their king came with them. Pharaoh, who had ridden out with treasure on his horses, walked in stripped of everything, and even there he tried to keep his height. He looked at the corpses and lifted his chin.

"Shall I go down and lie beside him?" he asked, as if a lower shelf were kept for lesser men and a better place 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."

Pharaoh went down.

Sheol 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 Comfort Held Back

The pit keeps a custom for its kings. A fallen ruler arriving among the dead lifts his eyes, sees the others already there, and something in him eases. He is not the only one the sword unmade. 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 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."

The comfort every other king received in the land of the dead was held back from him alone. He lay among the slain he had led there and found no rest in their company. The children he had thrown into the Nile had been Hebrew children. The pit would not make him one more fallen emperor among friends.