Jeremiahchapter 47
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Speaks with:Ezekiel 21×2Jeremiah 25×2Jeremiah 8×2Genesis 10×11 Kings 4×1Isaiah 8×1
Summary
Chapter summary
A brief, terrifying poem against the Philistines before Pharaoh smote Gaza. Waters rise out of the north and become an overflowing stream that covers the land and the city and its inhabitants; men cry, and every inhabitant howls. At the noise of stamping hoofs and rushing chariots and rumbling wheels, fathers do not look back for their children, so feeble are their hands: the day is come to destroy all the Philistines, and to cut off from Tyre and Sidon every helper that remains. Gaza is bald, Ashkelon brought to nothing. The chapter ends addressing the sword itself: how long till thou be quiet? put thyself into thy scabbard. Yet how can it rest when Jehovah has given it a charge?
Context
Prophecy · Jeremiah — Jeremiah overview
- A. 1–4 Waters Rising Out of the North Against Philistia
- B. 5–7 Ashkelon Cut Off: How Can the Sword Be Quiet?
The outline
A.Waters Rising Out of the North Against Philistiavv. 1 to 4
Read vv. 1 to 4 →B.Ashkelon Cut Off: How Can the Sword Be Quiet?vv. 5 to 7
Read vv. 5 to 7 →
The world behind this chapter
Jeremiah 47The history
The Philistine cities sat on the coastal highway, the main road between Egypt and the north, which made them rich in peacetime and the first stop for every invading army. Gaza and Ashkelon were among the five chief cities.
The oracle opens with Pharaoh striking Gaza — a reminder that Egypt worked the same road — and then describes waters rising out of the north to flood the land, the standard picture in this book for the Babylonian advance. In 604 BC Nebuchadnezzar took Ashkelon and destroyed it; the Babylonian Chronicle says he turned it into a ruin heap, and excavation at the site has found a thick burnt destruction layer from exactly that season, with smashed storage jars and the debris of a winery still in place.
The chapter says the Philistines were the remnant of the coastland of Caphtor. That points to their origin overseas, generally understood as Crete and the Aegean, which fits the distinctive foreign pottery that appears on that coast when the Philistines first arrive.
The mourning customs named are theirs, not Israel's: baldness has come upon Gaza, and the people gash themselves. Shaving the head and cutting the skin were widespread grief rituals in that world, and the Law forbade Israelites to copy them.
What it meant to them
The first hearers had grown up on stories of Philistine wars going back to Samson and David. Watching that ancient enemy simply cease to exist would have been sobering rather than satisfying.
The closing question is the point. The sword of the LORD is asked how long until it is quiet, and told to put itself back in the scabbard — and it does not. Judah was next on the same road.
Sources cited
- The Babylonian Chronicle, in James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament
- Walton, Matthews and Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament
The text of this chapter
This page carries no textual note on Jeremiah 47. Where this site has examined a place the manuscripts differ, the examination is in the manuscripts room. Every place this site examines →
This page draws on Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory; John Calvin, Commentaries; John Wesley, Notes on the Old Testament and Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary.