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False Kings Called Themselves Gods Until Glory Appeared

Pharaoh, Sancheriv, Nebuchadnezzar, and the prince of Tyre each claimed divinity, and Israel's song at the sea answers every throne with one question.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Pharaoh Stood at the Head of a Long Line
  2. The River Drowned Its Owner
  3. Other Kings Made the Same Claim in Different Languages
  4. The Prince of Tyre Said It Most Directly

Pharaoh Stood at the Head of a Long Line

He was not the first ruler to confuse his throne with the divine, and he would not be the last. But Pharaoh stood at the head of a line the Mekhilta wanted Israel to see clearly: a procession of kings who had each, in their own generation and in their own particular way, said something that amounted to the same blasphemy. "I am a god. My power has no source above it. What I command, the world obeys."

Israel sang at the sea: "who is like You among the mighty?" The song was also a question, and the question was pointed directly at every throne in history that had tried to answer it in the affirmative.

Pharaoh said: "Mine is my river, and I have made it." Ezekiel remembered his words exactly. The Nile was not merely water in Egypt. It was food and wealth and calendar and border and royal power. To claim the river was to claim the source of life itself.

The River Drowned Its Owner

Then the sea split and Pharaoh rode his chariots into it as a man who believed water was his to command. He had the evidence of the Nile. He had years of floods arriving on schedule, years of his own irrigation mastery, years of being the man who controlled the water that controlled Egypt.

At the Red Sea he found a different kind of water. Not the Nile he had managed and claimed but a sea that opened for a people he had enslaved and closed on the army that had enslaved them. The king who said mine is my river entered the water and discovered that water belongs to the One who made it. The Mekhilta's question, who is like You, is not abstract praise. It is the answer that rose from the water.

Other Kings Made the Same Claim in Different Languages

Sancheriv of Assyria mocked the gods of every nation he had conquered. He stood before Jerusalem and listed the powers his army had already defeated, god after god, city after city. His message was simple: "your God will not save you from what no other god has stopped."

Isaiah answered him with a prophecy that the Mekhilta reads as confirmation of Israel's song. Sancheriv's campaigns did not prove that Assyria's power exceeded God's. They proved that God used Assyria as an instrument and would discard the instrument when it was no longer useful. The king who mistook himself for the purpose was about to discover he was only the tool.

Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon imagined himself climbing to the heights, above the stars, above the clouds. Isaiah imagines him saying he will be like the Most High. The Mekhilta places that ambition beside the song at the sea and lets the contrast speak. "Who is like You," sings Israel. "I will be like the Most High," says Babylon. One of those statements survives the test of history.

The Prince of Tyre Said It Most Directly

Tyre's ruler did not work through metaphor. He said: "I am a god." Ezekiel confronted him: "you are a man, not a god, though you set your heart as the heart of a god." The Mekhilta hears that confrontation as another verse in Israel's song. Who is like You. Nobody. Certainly not the man who claimed divinity and sat on a throne in Tyre.

The Mekhilta's list of claimants is also a list of empires that fell. Egypt. Assyria. Babylon. Tyre. Every power that said I am a god eventually had to answer the song at the sea, and the song had already answered them before they asked. Not one river, not one victory, not one city wall, not one throne was immune to the wind that blew at the sea.

ProphecyMosesKingsDivine GloryMekhilta
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From the tradition

Sources

3 sources

The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Mekhilta Tractate Shirah 8:7Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael

The Song at the Sea declares "Who is like You among the mighty (ba'eilim), O L-rd" (Exodus 15:11). The Mekhilta offers a pointed reading of "ba'eilim": who is like You among those who merely call themselves gods? The sages then assemble a roll call of human rulers who claimed divinity and were brought low, showing that none could stand against the true God.

First is Pharaoh, who boasted "Mine is my river, and I myself have made it" (Ezekiel 29:3), claiming even the Nile as his own creation. Next is Sancherev, king of Assyria, whose officer taunted, "Who among all the gods of the lands saved their land from my hand?" (II Kings 18:35), setting his master above every deity. Then Nevuchadnezzar of Babylon, who said "I shall mount the heights of a cloud; I shall liken myself to the Most High" (Isaiah 14:14), reaching for heaven itself. Last is the Negid Tzor, the ruler of Tyre, addressed by the prophet: "Because your heart has grown proud and you have said, I am a god" (Ezekiel 28:2-3). Each of these proud kings asserted a godhood that history erased. By gathering them, the Mekhilta sharpens Israel's praise at the sea: the boasting of flesh and blood collapses, while the one God who split the waters has no equal among the so-called mighty.

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Mekhilta Tractate Pischa 12:13Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael

The Mekhilta, the tannaitic commentary on Exodus, arrives at one of the most dramatic prophetic verses in all of Scripture: "The glory of the Lord shall appear, and all flesh will behold as one, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken" (Isaiah 40:5). The prophet Isaiah describes a future moment when every living being will witness God's glory simultaneously. But the rabbis press their signature question, where did God first speak this?

The Mekhilta traces the source to (Deuteronomy 32:39): "See, now, that I, I am He, and there is no god beside Me." This verse from the Song of Moses is one of the most powerful declarations of monotheism in the Torah. God is not merely announcing His existence. He is declaring His absolute singularity, there is nothing else, no rival power, no competing deity.

The connection between these two verses is theologically explosive. Isaiah's prophecy of universal revelation, the day when all flesh beholds God's glory, is rooted in Moses' song about the oneness of God. The future vision of all nations seeing God together is the fulfillment of what was already declared: that God alone exists as the source of all power.

When that day comes, the Mekhilta implies, there will be no debate about whose god is real. Every nation, every person, every living creature will see what Moses already proclaimed: there is only One.

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Mekhilta Tractate Bachodesh 10:14Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael

The Torah prohibits "gods of silver and gods of gold" (Exodus 20:20). But what exactly do these phrases add to the prohibition against idolatry? After all, the commandment against making graven images was already given. The Mekhilta finds a surprising and specific application.

God commanded in (Exodus 25:18) that two golden cherubs be made for the top of the Ark of the Covenant. Two, and only two. But someone might reason: if two golden cherubs are good, would four not be better? More cherubs, more glory for God's dwelling place.

To prevent this, the Torah adds "gods of gold." If you make more than the prescribed two cherubs, the extras become idolatrous images, "gods of gold." The prohibition is not about cherubs being inherently wrong. Two cherubs are commanded. The third and fourth become forbidden objects.

This teaching reveals a crucial principle in Jewish law: the line between sacred object and idol can be terrifyingly thin. The same golden figure that is a holy commandment when there are two of them becomes a violation of the second commandment when there are three. The difference is not in the object itself but in whether God commanded it. Sanctity in Judaism is not about the material or the form, it is about obedience to divine instruction. Exceed the specification by even one cherub, and you have crossed from worship into idolatry.

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