Behold, I will give Pharaoh-hophra... — The fate of the Egyptian king is announced, coming, as it did, before that of the fugitives, as a “sign” that the prediction of their doom also would in due course be accomplished. The king thus named — the Apries of Herod. II., 161, 163, 169 — was the son of Psammis, and reigned for twenty-five years. He attacked Sidon by land and Tyre by sea, presumably before Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Phœnicia, and then sent his armies against Cyrene. The issue of that campaign was disastrous, and his subjects revolted. His general, Amasis, who was sent to pacify the rebels, put himself at their head. Apries was deposed, kept in honourable imprisonment at Sais for a time, and afterwards strangled. His reign extended from B.C. 594 to 569. Jeremiah probably delivered his prediction circ. B.C. 580, and it is the last recorded event in his life. A late Christian tradition, resting probably on a Jewish one, states that then, or shortly afterwards, the Egyptian Jews, irritated by his reproaches, rose up against him and stoned him to death. (Tertull. Adv. Gnost, c. 8; Hieron. Adv. Jovin, ii. 37.) In Hebrews 11:37 (“they were stoned “) we may probably find a reference to his fate as one of the “noble army of martyrs.”

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