Jeremiah 43:12

I will kindle a fire— He shall kindle a fire. Houbigant. "Nebuchadrezzar shall burn by my orders the temples of Egypt, and the palaces of the great men; and shall lead into captivity the kings, the subjects, and the gods." The author of the Observations remarks, that, "as the Arabs frequently withdraw themselves out of the reach of very potent enemies, by retiring into the depths of the wilderness; so, if provoked, they can occasion them very great bitternesses, it not being possible to be always guarded against them. It is but a little while ago that the public papers gave an account of their destroying many thousands of the Mecca pilgrims, upon some disgust which the Turkish government had given them, and filling the whole country with lamentation. Nor do the victories of the most successful princes intimidate them in many cases. Thus Curtius tells us, they set upon the troops of Alexander himself, the mighty conqueror of Asia, when they found him unguarded in Lebanon, and slew some, and took others." To these insults we may suppose Jeremiah to refer in this place, when, after foretelling the success of Nebuchadrezzar in Egypt, he says, that he should go forth from thence in peace. The deserts which lie between Egypt and Syria, are at this day terribly infested by the wild Arabs. "In travelling along the sea-coast of Syria, and from Suez to mount Sinai, (says Dr. Shaw) we were in little or no danger of being robbed or insulted;—in the holy land, and upon the isthmus betwixt Egypt and the Red Sea, our conductors cannot be too numerous." And then he goes on to inform his readers, that when he went from Ramah to Jerusalem, though the pilgrims were more than six thousand, and were escorted by four bands of Turkish infantry, exclusive of three or four hundred spahees, or cavalry, yet were they most barbarously insulted and beaten by the Arabs. This same desert, between Gaza and Egypt, appears to have been a scene of injuries also in the time of St. Jerome; and to have been under the power of the Arabs much more anciently still; for La Roque, in a note upon D'Arvieux, observes, that Cambyses, a little after Nebuchadrezzar's time, was enabled to pass through the deserts, by means of those supplies of water which an Arabian prince conveyed to him. A conquering prince's passing out of a country, would not in common have been the subject of a prediction; but in this case, as it was the passing through deserts where the Arabs at that time were, as they still are, so much masters, who were not afraid upon occasion to insult the most victorious princes, the mentioning of this circumstance was not unworthy the spirit of prophesy. This too may lead us perhaps to the true sense of the passage; And he shall array himself with the land of Egypt, as a shepherd putteth on his garment; for I should imagine it to signify, that "just as a person appearing to be a shepherd passed unmolested in common by the wild Arabs, so Nebuchadrezzar, by his subduing Egypt, shall induce the Arab tribes to suffer him to go out of that country unmolested; the possession of Egypt being to him, what a shepherd's garment was to a single person: for though upon occasion the Arabs are not afraid to affront the most powerful princes, it is not to be imagined that conquest and power have no effect upon them." They that dwell in the wilderness, says the Psalmist, referring to these Arabs, shall bow before Him whom he had described immediately before as having dominion from sea to sea, and from the river to the ends of the earth, and which he questionless supposes to have been the great inducement to that submission. Thus the Arab who was charged with the conducting of Bishop Pococke to Jerusalem, after secreting him for some time in his tent, when he took him out into the fields to walk there, put on him his striped garment, apparently for his security, and that he might pass for an Arab. So D'Arvieux, when he was sent by the consul of Sidon to the camp of the grand emir, equipped himself, for the greater security, exactly like an Arab, and accordingly passed unmolested and unquestioned. The employment of the Arabs is to feed cattle, and consequently a shepherd's garment may mean the same thing with the Arab dress: or, if it signifies something different, as there are Rushwans and Turcmen about Aleppo, who live in tents and feed cattle, much in the same manner as the Arabs, according to Dr. Russell; and as a passage in Isaiah 13:20 seems to insinuate that there was the like distinction in his times;—Neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there, neither shall the shepherds make their fold there;-that different dress of a shepherd, whatever it was, must equally protect a person in those deserts, for there would be no such thing as feeding of cattle in them, if such sort of persons were molested by the Arabs, as passengers are. See Observations, p. 61.