The Mekhilta preserves a disturbing alternative reading of Pharaoh's boast. "Others say: It is not written 'I will draw my sword,' but 'I will empty my sword.'" The shift from "draw" to "empty" unlocks a darker meaning. The Hebrew word for "sword" here serves as a euphemism, and the passage reveals that Pharaoh desired not merely to kill the Israelites but to sexually violate them.
The proof text is (Ezekiel 28:7): "And they will draw their sword against the beauty of your wisdom" — where "draw their sword" carries the same euphemistic force, meaning to "empty their sword" in an act of degradation. The Egyptians' pursuit was driven not only by greed or military ambition but by a desire for total domination and humiliation.
But Pharaoh's arrogance contained the seeds of his undoing. "Because his heart swelled in pride," the Mekhilta states, "the Holy One Blessed be He demeaned him, and all of the peoples degraded him." The ruler who intended to degrade others was himself degraded. The man who sought to humiliate was himself humiliated before every nation.
This reading from the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael (Tractate Shirah 7:5) refuses to sanitize the Egyptian threat. The rabbis understood that the cruelty of empire extends beyond killing — it reaches into violation, humiliation, and the destruction of human dignity. And they understood that <strong>God's</strong> justice matches the punishment precisely to the crime.