Jeremiah 47:5

Baldness has come upon them; the invaders have stripped them of all their ornaments, or they have made themselves bald in token of extreme grief, and they are cut off, with the other cities that were in the plain or valley about them.

Baldness - Extreme mourning (see Jer 16:6). Is cut off - Others render, is speechless through grief. With the remnant of their valley - Others, O remnant of their valley, how long wilt thou cut thyself? Their valley is that of Gaza and Ashkelon, the low-lying plain, usually called the Shefelah, which formed the territory of the Philistines. The reading of the Septuagint is remarkable: “the remnant of the Anakim,” which probably would mean Gath, the home of giants 1Sa 17:4. Jer 47:6. Or, Alas, Sword of Yahweh, how long wilt thou not rest? For the answer, see Jer 47:7.

TRAVELERS in the East tell us that among the most melancholy scenes they witness is the following: Men inflict upon themselves very grievous voluntary wounds and then exhibit themselves in public. They even disfigure themselves with gashes and cuts in the presence of excited throngs. I am speaking of what has occurred even within the last few years among the Muslims.

The Septuagint reads Anakim, the remains of whom were settled in those regions (Nu 13:28). Joshua dislodged them so that none were left but in Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod (Jos 11:21, 22). But the parallel (Jer 47:7), "Ashkelon . . . the sea-shore," established English Version here, "Ashkelon . . . their valley."

TRAVELERS in the East tell us that among the most melancholy scenes they witness is the following: Men inflict upon themselves very grievous voluntary wounds and then exhibit themselves in public. They even disfigure themselves with gashes and cuts in the presence of excited throngs. I am speaking of what has occurred even within the last few years among the Muslims. When some great Prophet or emir is coming that way, a certain number of fanatical Mahometans take swords, spears and other sharp instruments and gash themselves terribly, cutting their breasts, their faces, their heads and all parts of their bodies. Frequently they have taken care to dress themselves in white sheets so that as the blood flows copiously from their bodies, it may be the more clearly seen, that they may become the more ghastly spectacles of misery, or more fully display the religious excitement under which they labor. As everything in the East remains forever the same, this Muslim superstition carries us back to the olden times whereof we read in the Old Testament when the priests of Baal, having cried in vain to their idol, cut themselves with lances and with knives. Our translators were probably afraid to write the harsher words and so they translated the passage "knives and lances," but they might have written swords and spears—sharp instruments of a desperate character. Thus they displayed their inward zeal and thus, perhaps, they hoped to move the pity of their god. Eastern fanaticism surpasses belief—you would suppose that the raving creatures were about to commit suicide and yet there is a method in their madness. You could hardly think that men possessed of reason would torture themselves and disfigure themselves as they do. But they know what they are doing and are only carrying out their plans. The Lord expressly forbade His people, the Jews, to perpetrate such folly.