HOPHRA hŏf’ rə (חָפְרַ֤ע, perhaps the sun-god is longsuffering). Fourth king of the Egyp. twenty-sixth dynasty, Apries of the Greeks, Egyp. Wahibrē; he reigned nineteen years, 589-570 b.c.

When Nebuchadrezzar II of Babylon besieged Jerusalem in 589 b.c., Hophra rashly marched against him at the appeal of Zedekiah of Judah (sending a fleet to Phoenicia, Herodotus, ii. 161). As soon as the Babylonians turned from Jerusalem to meet him, the pharaoh seems to have retreated homeward thus affording the Hebrews no relief (Jer 37:5ff., 11ff. [47:1 ?]; cf. Ezek 17:15, 17). In his reign, and taken unwillingly to Tahpanhes in the Delta, Jeremiah prophesied that Nebuchadrezzar would in turn invade Egypt (Jer 43:9-13; 46:13-26), while in far distant Babylon, Ezekiel in the tenth to twelfth years of his captivity (c. 587-585 b.c.) uttered further judgments on the pharaoh and his land (Ezek 29:1-16; 30:20-26; 31, 32), and again in his twenty-seventh year, c. 570 b.c. (29:17-30:19) on the very eve of Hophra’s final fall. Hophra’s end was prophesied by Jeremiah (Jer 44:30, sole Biblical reference to Hophra by name) and resulted from a military defeat in Libya and a consequent revolt against him in Egypt; Nebuchadrezzar duly attacked Egypt in 568/567 b.c. (ANET, 308).