Jeremiah46chapter 46

Jeremiah 46:1-6

The heading marks Jeremiah's shift from oracles concerning Judah to the block of foreign-nation oracles that closes the book, opening with Egypt because Egypt was the power Judah's kings kept turning to for rescue. The date is fixed to the battle of Carchemish in 605 BC, where Nebuchadnezzar broke Pharaoh Necho's army and ended Egypt's bid to hold the old Assyrian territory, a battle 2 Kings 24:7 later confirms by noting that Egypt never again came out of her own land. The call to arms in verses 3 and 4, harness the horses, furbish the spears, put on the brigandines, is answered at once by the panic of verse 5, so that the muster and the rout stand side by side as one announcement rather than two events.

Jeremiah 46:7-12

Egypt pictures herself as the rising Nile flood covering the earth, an image of unstoppable power that the oracle turns back on her as the day of the Lord's vengeance, a sacrifice offered up by the river Euphrates rather than the Nile. The mercenary allies named in verse 9, Ethiopia, Libya and Lydia, fight for a cause already lost, hired strength unable to alter a sentence already passed. Verse 11 sends the daughter of Egypt to Gilead for balm, reversing the plea of 8:22, is there no balm in Gilead, into an ironic verdict on a nation seeking a cure that belongs to someone else and will not work for her.

Jeremiah 46:13-19

This second oracle turns from Carchemish to a later invasion of Egypt's own soil, and the cities it names, Migdol, Noph and Tahpanhes, are the very towns where the fleeing remnant of Judah had carried Jeremiah after Gedaliah's murder (43:7), so the judgment reaches Israel's chosen refuge along with Egypt's own people. Tabor among the mountains and Carmel by the sea, both unmistakable landmarks visible for miles, supply the simile for an invader whose coming cannot be missed. Noph, the city of Memphis, is told plainly that it shall be waste and without an inhabitant.

Jeremiah 46:20-26

Egypt is called a fair heifer with destruction already coming out of the north, and her hired soldiers, likened to fatted bullocks that flee rather than fight, cannot stand because their day of calamity has arrived. Her army is pictured as a forest cut down by axes, an image of a force that looked impenetrable and was felled all the same. The judgment falls by name on No, on Pharaoh, and on Amon of No, Thebes and its god both named together, yet verse 26 closes with a promise that the land shall afterward be inhabited as in the days of old, the same mercy extended to a judged nation that the book gives Moab and others in these chapters.

Jeremiah 46:27-28

The oracle against Egypt closes with an abrupt turn to comfort for Jacob, fear not doubled in one breath across verses 27 and 28, a formula that recurs almost word for word at 30:10-11. The distinction drawn is not that Israel escapes judgment but that her judgment is of a different kind, I will make a full end of all the nations, but I will not make a full end of thee, correcting in measure rather than destroying outright. The same book that has just pronounced Egypt's ruin closes her oracle by naming the different terms under which its own exiled people stand.