Jeremiah 46:2

46:1-12 The whole word of God is against those who obey not the gospel of Christ; but it is for those, even of the Gentiles, who turn to Him. The prophecy begins with Egypt. Let them strengthen themselves with all the art and interest they have, yet it shall be all in vain. The wounds God inflicts on his enemies, cannot be healed by medicines. Power and prosperity soon pass from one to another in this changing world.

Jeremiah 46:2 . Against Egypt, against the army of Pharaoh-necho — Pharaoh- necho was king of Egypt in Josiah’s time, and it was by his army that Josiah was killed at Megiddo, as is related 2 Kings 23:29 , where see the note. That army was then marching under the conduct of Necho against the Medes and Babylonians, who, having by the capture of Nineveh destroyed the Assyrian empire, had become formidable to the neighbouring states. Josiah opposed it in its march through the country, but was defeated, and received a wound in the battle which proved mortal. Necho continued his march after this victory, defeated the Babylonians, took Carchemish, and securing it with a strong garrison, returned into his own country. Nabopolassar, the king of Babylon, observing that all Syria and Palestine had revolted on account of the reduction of Carchemish by the Egyptians, sent his son Nebuchadnezzar with an army to retake that city, and recover the revolted provinces. Necho marched with a powerful army to oppose him; and it appears it was at the time when the Egyptian army lay along the banks of the Euphrates, waiting to oppose the entrance of Nebuchadnezzar into Syria, that this prophecy was delivered, namely, as is here said, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim.

The two armies came to an engagement near the city of Carchemish, and the event of the battle proved very disastrous to the Egyptians, who were routed with prodigious slaughter, as is here foretold by the prophet in a very animated style, and with great poetic energy and liveliness of colouring.

Verse 2. - Against Egypt, against the army; rather, concerning Egypt, concerning the army. Pharaoh-necho. Necho II., a member of the twenty-sixth Egyptian dynasty, sou of Psametik I. (Psammetichus), who had for a time revived the declining power of Egypt. Herodotus (2:158) credits him with being the first to construct a canal to the Red Sea, which seems an exaggeration (see Sir Gardner Wilkinson's note ap. Rawlinson), also (4:42) with having caused the circumnavigation of Africa, after which the Phoenician seamen brought back the startling news that they had had the sun upon their right hand. This energetic monarch noticed the decline of Assyria, and, at the battle of Megiddo (Herodotus, 2:159, wrongly says Magdolus or Migdol), reattached Judah to the Egyptian empire. Four years later, at the battle of Carchemish, he himself sustained a crushing defeat at the hands of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar ( 2 Chronicles 35:20 ). Carehemish . This was the great emporium of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine. Its true site was discovered by Mr. George Smith, in his last fatal journey, to be at Jerabis or Jirbas, on the right bank of the Euphrates. It was anciently a city of the Kheta (equivalent to Khittim, "Hittites"), but passed to the Assyrians, under Sargon, under whom it attained the highest commercial prosperity, especially after the overthrow of Tyre by Sennacherib.

The "mana," or mina , "of Gargamis" is constantly referred to as a standard weight in the commercial cuneiform inscriptions. In the fourth year, etc. Marcus Niebuhr wishes to put a stop before these words, so as to make them a definition of the date of the prophecy. He thinks the date of the battle of Carchemish was the third and not the fourth year of Jehoiakim. This view, however, is very uncertain (see Keil), and it is exegetieally very unnatural to detach the closing words of ver. 2 from those which precede. The obvious inference, moreover, from the prophecy (vers. 2-12) is that it was written at or about the time of the battle; a special date for the prophecy did not require to be given. Should Niebuhr's chronological combinations, however, turn out to be correct, the mistake would probably not be that of Jeremiah, nor of his scribe, but of his editor, who may easily have fallen into error in the mere minutiae of chronology. Jeremiah 46:2

2 . Pharaoh-neco ] This monarch (b.c. 610–594) had defeated and slain Josiah at Megiddo (b.c. 608). In three months he had deposed Josiah’s successor, Jehoahaz, and imprisoned him at Riblah, and had set up Jehoiakim. He was extending his conquests in the Asiatic direction when he was overthrown at Carchemish (b.c. 605). Carchemish ] Gargamish in Assyrian inscriptions, was not Circesium at the junction of the rivers Chaboras and Euphrates, but considerably higher up the latter stream and some distance to the north of lat. 36°. Professor Rawlinson ( Anc. Mon . II. 475) describes it as the key of Syria on the east and as commanding the ordinary passage of the Euphrates. It was, he adds, the only great city in that quarter. The meaning of the name is unknown. 2–12 . Co. declines to accept objections which have been brought by some recent commentators to the substantial genuineness of these vv ., and Gi. on the whole agrees, but considers the passage to have been expanded.

(2) Against Egypt, against the army of Pharaoh-necho. —The king of Egypt thus named was the last of its great native sovereigns. He was the sixth king of the twenty-sixth dynasty of Manetho, and succeeded his father Psammetichus in B.C. 610, and reigned for sixteen years. Herodotus (ii. 158, 159) relates as his chief achievements that he anticipated the Suez Canal by endeavouring to connect the Nile with the Red Sea, but was stopped by an oracle, and sent a fleet of Phœnician ships to circumnavigate Africa. One hundred and twenty thousand lives were said to have been sacrificed in the former enterprise. On desisting from it, he turned his attention to other plans of conquest, defeated the Syrians at Magdolus, near Pelusium, and took Cadytis, a great city of Syria, which Herodotus describes as not much less than Sardis. By some writers this has been identified with the capture of Jerusalem in 2Chronicles 36:3 , the name Cadytis being looked on as equivalent to Kadusha (=the holy city),and so anticipating the modern Arabic name of El-Khuds. Herodotus, however (iii. 5), describes it as being near the coast, and this has led to its being identified with Gaza, or Kedesh-Naphtali, or a Hittite city—Ketesh—on the Orontes, near which the great commercial and. military road turned off for Damascus and the Euphrates.

In any case, it was in the course of this invasion, directed against the Babylonian Empire, then ruled by Nabopolassar, the father of Nebuchadnezzar, that he defeated and slew Josiah at Megiddo ( 2Chronicles 35:20-24 ), deposed Jehoahaz, and appointed Jehoiakim ( 2Chronicles 36:4 ). By some writers, accordingly (R. S. Poole, in Smith’s Dict. Bible, Art. Pharaoh-necho ) , Megiddo is identified with the Magdolus of Herodotus. His army advanced, and took the city of Carchemish, by some (Hitzig) identified with Circesium, an island formed by the confluence of the Chaboras and the Euphrates; by others (Rawlinson) with a Hittite city, now Jerablus, a corruption of the Greek Hierapolis, much higher up the Euphrates. (See Note on Isaiah 10:9 ). After the capture Necho appears to have returned to Egypt. Three years later (B.C. 606) Carchemish was taken by Nebuchadnezzar with the almost total defeat of Necho’s army, he himself having returned to Egypt, and it is this defeat of which Jeremiah now proceeds to speak as in a song of anticipated triumph at the downfall of the Egyptian oppressor.

Pharah-necho was king of Egypt in Josiah’s time; it was by his army that Josiah was killed at Megiddo, 2 Kings 23:29 ; it was he that made Jehoiakim king of Judah, taking away Jehoahaz, 2 Kings 23:34 ; but though he prevailed at that time, and that was one time when he came out against Carchemish, 2 Chronicles 35:20 , yet he was overthrown by Nebuchadnezzar in a battle with him afterwards, as appears from 2 Kings 24:7 , and Jehoiakim was made tributary to Nebuchadnezzar, as we read, 2 Kings 24:1 ; and the king of Egypt was brought so low by that victory, that he stirred no more out of Egypt, for the king of Babylon had taken from him all from Nilus, the great river of Egypt, to Euphrates ; and this, saith this verse, was in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. This prophecy must be before that time. Carchemish appeareth, from Isaiah 10:9 , to have been a place in Syria where the Egyptian army had been in Josiah’s time, and then went away conquerors, as appears from 2 Chronicles 35:20 , &c.

2. Inscription of the first prophecy. Pharaoh-necho—He, when going against Carchemish (Cercusium, near the Euphrates), encountered Josiah, king of Judah (the ally of Assyria), at Megiddo, and slew him there (2Ki 23:29; 2Ch 35:20-24); but he was four years subsequently overcome at Carchemish, by Nebuchadnezzar, as is foretold here; and lost all the territory which had been subject to the Pharaohs west of the Euphrates, and between it and the Nile. The prediction would mitigate the Jews' grief for Josiah, and show his death was not to be unavenged (2Ki 24:7). He is famed as having fitted out a fleet of discovery from the Red Sea, which doubled the Cape of Good Hope and returned to Egypt by the Mediterranean.