Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Jeremiah · About this commentary
The Queen of Heaven in Egypt
Jeremiah 44:1-14
1 The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the Jews who lived in the land of Egypt, who lived at Migdol, and at Tahpanhes, and at Memphis, and in the country of Pathros, saying, · WEB
Addressing communities scattered across Egypt, Jeremiah asks why people who watched their country burn for this are doing it again.
The address names four places: Migdol, Tahpanhes, Memphis and the country of Pathros. The refugees have already spread the length of Egypt in a short time. This is no longer one frightened column near the border. It is a diaspora, and the message has to be carried to all of it.
The argument begins with something they cannot dispute, and it appeals to their own eyes: You have seen all the evil that I have brought on Jerusalem, and on all the cities of Judah. Behold, today they are a desolation. Then the cause, which they had also watched. They burned incense to other gods. Prophets were sent early and often. Nobody turned. Every step of the reasoning is a matter of public record for the people being addressed. They are not being asked to accept a doctrine. They are being asked to draw a conclusion from a ruin they walked out of.
The question that follows is the one the whole chapter turns on, and it is asked with real bewilderment: Why do you commit great evil against your own souls? The same practice, in a new country, by the survivors of the last one. And the specification of who is being lost is not rhetorical either — man and woman, infant and nursing child. The community is small enough now that this finishes it.
The charge of forgetting is then laid out in a list that is careful to include everyone: the wickedness of your fathers, of the kings of Judah, of their wives, your own, and of your wives. Nobody in that list is a bystander. The naming of the women twice prepares for the next scene, where they speak for themselves. And the verdict is that they are not humbled even to this day. There has been a siege, a burning, a deportation and the murder of a governor. The one thing that has not happened is any change of mind.
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