“Why has Apis fled?

Why did your bull

Not stand?

Because Yahweh

Thrust him down.

Your multitude stumbled.

They fell.

They said to one another.

‘Come!

Let us go back

To our own people,

To the land of our birth,

Because of the destroying sword.’”

Apis, the sacred bull god of Memphis and southern Egypt, has fled because Yahweh threw him down. Why was he not able to stand up against Yahweh? All the people stumbled around as they fell. They said to one another that they should go back to their own people, where they were born. They wanted to avoid the destroying sword of the king of Babylon.