Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Jeremiah · About this commentary
A Beautiful Heifer, and Jacob Not Unpunished
Jeremiah 46:13-28
13 The word that Yahweh spoke to Jeremiah the prophet, how that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon should come and strike the land of Egypt: · WEB
Egypt's own territory is invaded, her gods are punished with her king, and the oracle ends by telling frightened Judeans living there not to be afraid.
The second oracle moves the war into Egypt itself. The towns it names — Migdol, Memphis, Tahpanhes — are precisely the places where the refugees from Judah had settled Jeremiah 44:1. The people who fled the sword are told that the sword has an address list, and it is theirs.
The mercenaries go first. Egypt's hired men are like stall-fed calves. They turn and run for the land of their birth rather than die for an employer, and they leave a verdict on the man who hired them: Pharaoh king of Egypt is but a noise; he has let the appointed time pass by. A reputation for power that was never tested, and an opportunity missed. Then the invader is described by two landmarks, Tabor among the mountains and Carmel by the sea — features that dominate the horizon and cannot be mistaken for anything else. Egypt herself is a beautiful heifer, with destruction coming out of the north.
The felling image that follows is the most exact. The Babylonians come with axes like woodcutters and cut down her forest, though it cannot be searched, because they are more than the locusts, and are innumerable. A forest too dense to survey is cleared by men who simply outnumber the trees. And what is punished includes the gods. Amon of the great southern capital is named, with Pharaoh, with Egypt, her gods and her kings, and those who trust in him.
Then two things that are easy to miss. Egypt is given a restoration — afterwards it will be inhabited, as in the days of old — so even the oracle against the oldest oppressor of Israel ends with the country living again. And the section closes with a promise addressed not to Egypt but to Jacob, repeated word for word from the book of consolation Jeremiah 30:10–11. Do not be afraid. I will save you from afar. I will make a full end of the nations but not of you, and I will correct you in measure. It is placed at the end of the Egypt oracle for the sake of the Judeans reading it in Egypt, who had been told they would die there. The nation is not finished even where these particular people are.
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