WormWear

Isaiah 14:11 describes the king of Egypt descending to Sheol to speel on a bed of maggots and cover himself with worms. I’ve commented in a previous post on the connection of worms with ancient dyeing techniques, but there’s another aspect to this.

Robes are a “Day 5” phenomenon. In the seven-speech sequence of Exodus 25-30, the priestly robes are in the fifth slot. Day 5 is about gathering the swarms around, in something like a robe. Yahweh is doing Day 5 stuff when He organizes Israel in tribes around His tent. He robes Himself in His tent curtains, then gathers the “swarms” of Israel. At another register, the swarm of cherubim and angels forms a cloud around Yahweh; the cloud forms Yahweh’s robes of glory, and it is made up of loudly buzzing winged beings.

In Isaiah, the king of Egypt is going to don a “glory swarm,” but, in contrast to Yahweh, who wears a glory-swarm of sky beings, the king of Egypt wears an infernal, Sheolic swarm of worms. That too is Day 5: The flying ones in the sky, and the swarming ones in sea and on earth. And we all will wear one or the other: We will all either be robed in glory or wrapped in wormwear.