Jeremiah 46:1-28
1 The word of the LORD which came to Jeremiah the prophet against the Gentiles;
2 Against Egypt, against the army of Pharaohnecho king of Egypt, which was by the river Euphrates in Carchemish, which Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon smote in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah.
3 Order ye the buckler and shield, and draw near to battle.
4 Harness the horses; and get up, ye horsemen, and stand forth with your helmets; furbish the spears, and put on the brigandines.
5 Wherefore have I seen them dismayed and turned away back? and their mighty ones are beaten down, and are fled apace, and look not back: for fear was round about, saith the LORD.
6 Let not the swift flee away, nor the mighty man escape; they shall stumble, and fall toward the north by the river Euphrates.
7 Who is this that cometh up as a flood, whose waters are moved as the rivers?
8 Egypt riseth up like a flood, and his waters are moved like the rivers; and he saith, I will go up, and will cover the earth; I will destroy the city and the inhabitants thereof.
9 Come up, ye horses; and rage, ye chariots; and let the mighty men come forth; the Ethiopiansa and the Libyans, that handle the shield; and the Lydians, that handle and bend the bow.
10 For this is the day of the Lord GOD of hosts, a day of vengeance, that he may avenge him of his adversaries: and the sword shall devour, and it shall be satiate and made drunk with their blood: for the Lord GOD of hosts hath a sacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates.
11 Go up into Gilead, and take balm, O virgin, the daughter of Egypt: in vain shalt thou use many medicines; for thou shalt not be cured.
12 The nations have heard of thy shame, and thy cry hath filled the land: for the mighty man hath stumbled against the mighty, and they are fallen both together.
13 The word that the LORD spake to Jeremiah the prophet, how Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon should come and smite the land of Egypt.
14 Declare ye in Egypt, and publish in Migdol, and publish in Noph and in Tahpanhes: say ye, Stand fast, and prepare thee; for the sword shall devour round about thee.
15 Why are thy valiant men swept away? they stood not, because the LORD did drive them.
16 He made many to fall, yea, one fell upon another: and they said, Arise, and let us go again to our own people, and to the land of our nativity, from the oppressing sword.
17 They did cry there, Pharaoh king of Egypt is but a noise; he hath passed the time appointed.
18 As I live, saith the King, whose name is the LORD of hosts, Surely as Tabor is among the mountains, and as Carmel by the sea, so shall he come.
19 O thou daughter dwelling in Egypt, furnishb thyself to go into captivity: for Noph shall be waste and desolate without an inhabitant.
20 Egypt is like a very fair heifer, but destruction cometh; it cometh out of the north.
21 Also her hired men are in the midst of her like fattedc bullocks; for they also are turned back, and are fled away together: they did not stand, because the day of their calamity was come upon them, and the time of their visitation.
22 The voice thereof shall go like a serpent; for they shall march with an army, and come against her with axes, as hewers of wood.
23 They shall cut down her forest, saith the LORD, though it cannot be searched; because they are more than the grasshoppers, and are innumerable.
24 The daughter of Egypt shall be confounded; she shall be delivered into the hand of the people of the north.
25 The LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, saith; Behold, I will punish the multituded of No, and Pharaoh, and Egypt, with their gods, and their kings; even Pharaoh, and all them that trust in him:
26 And I will deliver them into the hand of those that seek their lives, and into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of his servants: and afterward it shall be inhabited, as in the days of old, saith the LORD.
27 But fear not thou, O my servant Jacob, and be not dismayed, O Israel: for, behold, I will save thee from afar off, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and be in rest and at ease, and none shall make him afraid.
28 Fear thou not, O Jacob my servant, saith the LORD: for I am with thee; for I will make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven thee: but I will not make a full end of thee, but correct thee in measure; yet will I not leave thee wholly unpunished.
Jeremiah 46:1. The Gentiles. The succeeding six Chapter s ought to have followed the twenty fifth chapter of this book, as they do in the Vatican and Alexandrian copies of the Septuagint.
Jeremiah 46:6. They shall stumble and fall by the river Euphrates. In the great battle after king Josiah had been slain, the Egyptians claimed the victory; but now, after five years, the Egyptians were defeated, and could never meet the Assyrians with success. In this battle the swift flee away, as though their feet had been light ποδωκεις as those of Achilles, who is celebrated in Homer, or those of Asahel in sacred literature.
Jeremiah 46:7. Who is this that cometh up as a flood, with a vast line of horses? Immense armies, by their wants, and by disorder, have often received tremendous defeats.
Jeremiah 46:9. The Ethiopians the Libyans and the Lydians. The Hebrew, which calls all countries after the families who first inhabited them, has here, Cush, Phut, and Lud. The two first were sons of Ham and brothers of Mitzraim, father of the Egyptians. The Ethiopians, says Herodotus, had bows four cubits long, for they were men of great stature, and lived to a hundred and twenty years of age; but the Persians only eighty years. Poole and Lowth think, that Phut signifies Mauritania, and Lud the people of Meroè. They were distinct allies of the Egyptians. Nahum 3:9.
Jeremiah 46:11. Take balm, oh virgin daughter of Egypt. A keen arrow of satire, indicating that Egypt should never regain the glory she once enjoyed. Pathros, the old name of Theboid, of which Thebes was the capital, shall be the basest of kingdoms. Ezekiel 29:15. The nations over whom thou hast thrown thy bloody yoke, and whose kings thou hast led away in chains, have heard of thy shameful flight before the armies of Assyria.
Jeremiah 46:15. Why are thy valiant men swept away. This is not true of the Egyptian soldiers; they still were with Pharaoh. The LXX read, why has Apis [thy god] forsaken thee? Thy chosen calf has not stood true. The Lord drove him away. Words of the keenest satire to the Egyptians, and to their gods.
Jeremiah 46:19. Noph, the Memphis of the Greeks, shall be waste and desolate without an inhabitant. This city was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in the twenty third year of his reign. Cairo, the new capital, is built nearer to the Nile; which demonstrates that the words of Isaiah were literally accomplished: chap. 19.
Jeremiah 46:20. A very fair heifer, fat and beautiful. Grotius thinks the nation of Egypt is so called, in allusion to Apis, a bull of beautiful shape and colour, which was an object of national worship.
Jeremiah 46:23. They shall cut down her forests. Though history is silent about the forests of Egypt, yet Herodotus says, they once had twenty thousand villages well populated, and one thousand and twenty cities. They must therefore have had great resources of timber for their buildings, and for naval architecture.
Jeremiah 46:25. I will punish the multitude of No. Memphis, the ancient Noph, is meant here. No Ammon, the ancient Thebes, with its hundred fortified gates, is apparently of more ancient date. The LXX read, Diospolis. See on Ezekiel 30:15.
REFLECTIONS.
Though Jeremiah was a man of cool mind, and of plain address, yet here, admitted to the visions of the future, he indulges in the sublime of thought, the richest beauties of language, and exuberance of figures. Where can we find a passage more replete with effusions of poësy? By this prophecy we see the vast preparations for war, and how God suffered the multitude of Egypt to sweep and punish the nations to the south of the Jordan; and then to cause them nearly all to perish in the place which had bounded their former conquests. Thus God can lower the insolence of a proud army, as he sinks the mighty swells of the ocean when the gale is high. Thus also the wicked conquer in a victorious career, and cover themselves with the bloody laurels of a glorious campaign. The vanquished taking heart, make the victors retire to their country, as a mighty wave which has wasted its fury on the beach recoils on the ocean by its own weight. Thus narrow- sighted nations boast that heaven is on their side, while in reality heaven is so managing their avarice and pride as to make them one to another the worst of scourges. This prophecy closes in the usual strain of sunshine on Zion, when the stormy clouds of war are blown away; joy to the Jews on their return from Babylon, and lasting glory to the true Zion, the church of the living God.