Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.
Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness. The plural "heads" is put for the singular, his monstrous head being equal in size to many heads. On "leviathan" cf. note, Job 41:1-34. The term is a general one for the Saurian and Cetacean tribes. The King of Egypt, as having not only the Nile river, but also an empire extending to both the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, is described by the double term (tannin, Psalms 74:13, and leviathan). When Pharaoh and His host were overthrown in the Red Sea, their bodies being cast on shore, along with all their trappings, became spoil to the Israelites-the people then "dwelling in the wilderness" (cf. the phrase, Numbers 14:9, "the people of the land ... are bread for us"). Hengstenberg refers the phrase to the Icthyophagi or people inhabiting the wilderness at the Red Sea, whom the God of nature fed with the fish, and also the larger monsters of the deep, whales, etc., cast on the shore, as their ordinary food (Diodorus, B. 3:, p. 110, 122; Agatharcides, ch. 20), Muis refers to the wild birds and beasts called "the people inhabiting the wilderness;" as (Proverbs 30:25-26) to them God "gave" the carcasses of the Egyptians as "meat." Psalms 72:9 favours this. But the scope of the context shows that it is the benefits conferred on Israel which are here recounted.