Jeremiah 44:30

Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will give Pharaohhophra king of Egypt into the hand of his enemies, and into the hand of them that seek his life; as I gave Zedekiah king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, his enemy, and that sought his life.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(30) Behold, I will give Pharaoh-hophra . . .—The fate of the Egyptian king is announced, coming, as it did, before that of the fugitives, as a “sign” that the prediction of their doom also would in due course be accomplished. The king thus named—the Apries of Herod. II., 161, 163, 169—was the son of Psammis, and reigned for twenty-five years. He attacked Sidon by land and Tyre by sea, presumably before Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion of Phœnicia, and then sent his armies against Cyrene. The issue of that campaign was disastrous, and his subjects revolted. His general, Amasis, who was sent to pacify the rebels, put himself at their head. Apries was deposed, kept in honourable imprisonment at Sais for a time, and afterwards strangled. His reign extended from B.C. 594 to 569. Jeremiah probably delivered his prediction circ. B.C. 580, and it is the last recorded event in his life. A late Christian tradition, resting probably on a Jewish one, states that then, or shortly afterwards, the Egyptian Jews, irritated by his reproaches, rose up against him and stoned him to death. (Tertull. Adv. Gnost, c. 8; Hieron. Adv. Jovin, ii. 37.) In Hebrews 11:37 (“they were stoned “) we may probably find a reference to his fate as one of the “noble army of martyrs.”

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

44:20-30 Whatever evil comes upon us, it is because we have sinned against the Lord; we should therefore stand in awe, and sin not. Since they were determined to persist in their idolatry, God would go on to punish them. What little remains of religion were among them, would be lost. The creature-comforts and confidences from which we promise ourselves most, may fail as soon as those from which we promise ourselves least; and all are what God makes them, not what we fancy them to be. Well-grounded hopes of our having a part in the Divine mercy, are always united with repentance and obedience.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Pharaoh-Hophra came to the throne the year before Jerusalem was captured. He reigned for 19 years, probably the last 10 years as a prisoner. See the notes at Jeremiah 37:5; notes at Jeremiah 46:12.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

30. Hophra—in Herodotus called Apries. He succeeded Psammis, the successor of Pharaoh-necho, who was beaten by Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish, on the Euphrates. Amasis rebelled against, and overcame him, in the city Sais.

them that seek his life—Herodotus, in curious accordance with this, records that Amasis, after treating Hophra well at first, was instigated, by persons who thought they could not be safe unless he were put to death, to strangle him. "His enemies" refer to Amasis, &c.; the words are accurately chosen, so as not to refer to Nebuchadnezzar, who is not mentioned till the end of the verse, and in connection with Zedekiah (Eze 20:3; 30:21). Amasis' civil war with Hophra pioneered the way for Nebuchadnezzar's invasion in the twenty-third year of his reign [Josephus, Antiquities, 10.11].

Matthew Poole's Commentary

Pharaoh was a name common to all the Egyptian kings, as may be learned from Genesis 12:15 41:1 Exodus 1:8,11; but they had besides that name another peculiar to them. Whether this Hophra was Vaphres or Apries is not much material; nor is there any certainty when this prophecy was fulfilled; whether

Pharaoh-hophra were (as Herodotus saith) slain by Amasis, one of his subjects who rebelled against him and slew him, (as the aforementioned author tells us,) or Nebuchadnezzar, who Josephus saith came about five years after he had taken Jerusalem, and overran Egypt, and slew this Pharaoh-hophra, whose overthrow was a certain sign of the Jews’ destruction, it being not like that the king of Babylon should spare these Jews who had fled to this king of Egypt for shelter; considering also that the Jews had slain Gedaliah his deputy governor in Judea.

How God delivered Zedekiah into the hand of the king of Babylon, we read Jeremiah 39. Here now ends the story of these Jews that had fled into Egypt.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

Thus saith the Lord, behold, I will give Pharaohhophra king of Egypt,.... Pharaoh was a common name of the kings of Egypt, who usually had some surname, by which they were distinguished; and the surname of the then present king of Egypt was Hophra; whom the Septuagint and others call Vaphres; and, Herodotus (l) Apries. The Targum renders it Pharaoh the broken; and the Syriac version Pharaoh the lame: now it is here predicted as a sign of the destruction of the Jews in Egypt, which should follow after, that God would deliver this king

into the hand of his enemies, and into the hand of them that seek his life; either into the hands of his rebellious subjects, headed by Amasis, by whom he was kept alive for a while after taken, and then put to death, as Herodotus reports; or rather into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar; for Josephus says (m), that he, in the twenty third year of his reign, which was four or five years after the destruction of Jerusalem, having subdued the Syrians, Ammonites, and Moabites, entered Egypt in a hostile manner, and slew the then remaining king, and set up another; and this is confirmed by what follows:

as I gave Zedekiah king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and that sought his life; in like manner, and as sure as he had done the one, he would do the other; and he puts the Jews in mind of what he had done by him, and which they had full and certain knowledge of; and might from hence conclude that this also would be accomplished, here given as a sign of their own ruin; and which, when they saw come to pass, might know that it was at hand; and, indeed, the king of Egypt, in whom they trusted, being taken by his enemies, and his country wasted, they must in course fall a prey to the conqueror.

(l) Euterpe, sive l. 2. c. 161, 162, 169. & Melpomene, sive l. 4. c. 159. (m) Antiqu. l. 10. c. 9. sect. 7.

Geneva Study Bible

Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will {p} give Pharaohhophra king of Egypt into the hand of his enemies, and into the hand of them that seek his life; as I gave Zedekiah king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, his enemy, and that sought his life.

(p) He shows the means by which they would be destroyed to assure them of the certainty of the plague and yet they remain still in their obstinacy till they perish: for Josephus writes that five years after the taking of Jerusalem, Nebuchadnezzar the younger having overcome the Moabites and the Ammonites went against Egypt and slew the king and so brought these Jews and others into Babylon.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 30. - I will give Pharaoh-hophra, etc. The sign consists in the capture of Hophra by his deadly enemies. Henceforth he will live in constant alarm, for he is in the hands of those "that seek his life." All that we know of the fate of Hophra (Apries) is derived from Herodotus (2:169), who states that Amssis "gave Apries over into the hands of his former subjects, to deal with as they chose. Then the Egyptians took him and strangled him" (see further on Jeremiah 46:13).



Jeremiah 44:30

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

In confirmation of this threatening, the Lord gives them another sign which, when it is fulfilled, will let them know that the destruction announced to them shall certainly befall them. The token consists in the giving up of King Hophra into the hand of his enemies. As certainly as this shall take place, so certainly shall the extermination of the Jews in Egypt ensue. The name חפרע is rendered Οὐάφρις in Manetho, in the classical writers ̓Απρίης, Apris, who, according to Herodotus (ii. 161), reigned twenty-five years, but nineteen according to Manetho (cf. Boeckh, Manetho, etc., p. 341ff.). His death took place in the year 570 b.c. This date is reached by a comparison of the following facts: - Cambyses conquered Egypt in the year 525; and in the preceding year Amasis had died, after a reign of forty-four years (Herod. iii. 10). Hence Amasis - who took Apris prisoner, and gave him up to the common people, who killed him (Herod. ii.-161-163, 169) - must have commenced his reign in the year 570. On the death of Apris, or Hophra, cf. the explanation given on p. 353f., where we have shown that the words, "I will give him into the hand of his enemies, and of those who seek his life," when compared with what is said of Zedekiah, "into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar his enemy," do not require us to assume that Hophra was killed by Nebuchadnezzar, and can very well be harmonized with the notice of Herodotus regarding the death of this king.

Hitzig and Graf have taken objection to this sign given by Jeremiah, and regard Jeremiah 44:29, Jeremiah 44:30 as a spurious vaticinium ex eventu, the work of another hand. The reasons they urge are, that it is scarcely possible Jeremiah could have lived till 570; that Jeremiah 44:29. would be the only place where Jeremiah offered such a criterion; and that, even as it is, these verses contain nothing original, but, by their stiff and lifeless parallelism, are easily seen to be an artificial conclusion. Of these three arguments, the last can prove nothing, since it is merely a subjective opinion on an aesthetic point. The second, again, rather declares for than against the genuineness. For "if it were not Jeremiah's usual, elsewhere, to offer some criterion, then such an interpolation would have been all the more carefully avoided" (Ngelsbach). Of course we do not find any other signs of this kind in Jeremiah; but it does not follow from this that he could not offer such a thing in a special case. Yet the ground taken up by Ngelsbach, as sufficient to establish this position, seems quite untenable, viz., that the announcement of the fate in store for the king must have been the answer of the true God to the presumptuous boast of Apris, mentioned by Herodotus, "that even God could not dethrone him, so firmly did he think he was established:" this view of the matter seems too remote from the object of Jeremiah's address. And finally, the first-named objection receives importance only on the supposition that "an event which was intended to serve as אות, a sign or criterion, must be something that was to happen immediately, or within a brief appointed period of time, so that a person might be able, from the occurrence of the one, to conclude that what had been foretold about a later period would as certainly take place" (Graf). But there are no sufficient grounds for this hypothesis. If no definite time be fixed for the occurrence of this sign, then it may not appear till a considerable time afterwards, and yet be a pledge for the occurrence of what was predicted for a still later period. That Jeremiah 54ed till the year 570 is certainly not inconceivable, but it is not likely that he uttered the prophecy now before us at the advanced age of nearly eighty years. Now, if his address is allowed to be a real prophecy, and not a mere vaticinium ex eventu, as Hitzig, looking from his dogmatic standpoint, considers it, then it must have been uttered before the year 570; but whether this was two, or five, or ten years before, makes no material difference. The address itself contains nothing to justify the assumption of Graf, that it is closely connected with the prophecy in Jeremiah 43:8-13, and with the warning against the migration into Egypt, Jeremiah 42. That the Jews spoken of had not been long in Egypt, cannot be inferred from Jeremiah 44:8, Jeremiah 44:12, and Jeremiah 44:18; on the contrary, the fact that they had settled down in different parts of Egypt, and had assembled at Pathros for a festival, shows that they had been living there for a considerable time before. Nor does it follow, from the statement in Jeremiah 44:14 that they longed to return to Judah, that they had gone to Egypt some months before. The desire to return into the land of their fathers remains, in a measure, in the heart of the Jew even at the present day. After all, then, no valid reason can be assigned for doubting the genuineness of these verses.

On the fulfilment of these threatenings Ngelsbach remarks: "Every one must be struck on finding that, in Jeremiah 44, the extermination of the Jews who dwelt in Egypt is predicted; while some centuries later, the Jews in Egypt were very numerous, and that country formed a central point for the Jewish exiles (cf. Herzog, Real-Encycl. xvii. S. 285). Alexander the Great found so many Jews in Egypt, that he peopled with Jews, in great measure, the city he had founded and called after himself (cf. Herzog, i. S. 235). How did these Jews get to Egypt? Whence the great number of Jews whom Alexander found already in Egypt? I am inclined to think that we must consider them, for the most part, as the descendants of those who had come into the country with Jeremiah. But, according to this view of the matter, Jeremiah's prophecy has not been fulfilled." Ngelsbach therefore thinks we must assume that idolatrous worship, through time, almost entirely ceased among the exiled Jews in Egypt as it did among those in Babylon, and that the Lord then, in return, as regards the penitents, repented of the evil which He had spoken against them (Jeremiah 26:13, Jeremiah 26:19). But this whole explanation is fundamentally wrong, since the assertion, that Alexander the Great found so many Jews in Egypt, that with them mainly he peopled the city of Alexandria which he had founded, is contrary to historic testimony. In Herzog (Real-Encycl. i. S. 235), to which Ngelsbach refers for proof on the point, nothing of the kind is to be found, but rather the opposite, viz., the following: "Soon after the foundation of Alexandria by Alexander the Great, this city became not merely the centre of Jewish Hellenism in Egypt, but generally speaking the place of union between Oriental and Occidental Jews. The external condition of the Jews of Alexandria must, on the whole, be characterized as highly prosperous. The first Jewish settlers had, indeed, been compelled by Alexander the Great to take up their residence in the city (Josephus, Antt. xv. 3. 1); so, too, were other Jews, by Ptolemy I. or Lagi (ibid. xii. 2. 4). But both of these monarchs granted them the same rights and privileges as the Macedonians, including Greek citizenship; and in consequence of the extremely advantageous position of the city, it speedily increased in importance. A still larger number, therefore, soon went thither of their own accord, and adopted the Greek language." In this account, the quotation from Josephus, Antt. xv. 3. 1, is certainly incorrect; for neither is there in that passage any testimony borne to the measures attributed to Alexander, nor are there any other historical testimonies given from antiquity. But as little can we find any proofs that Alexander the Great found so many Jews in Egypt that he could, to a large extent, people with them the city he had founded. It is merely testified by Josephus (Antt. xi. 8. 5), and by Hecataeus in Josephus (contra Ap. i. 22; p. 457, ed. Haverc.), that Alexander had Jewish soldiers in his army; it is further evident, from a notice in Josephus, de bell. Jud. ii. 18. 7, contra Ap. ii. 4) cf. Curtius Rufus, iv. 8), that the newly founded city, even under Alexander, immediately after it was commenced, and still more under Ptolemy Lagi (cf. Josephus, Antt. xii. 1, and Hecataeus in Jos. contra Ap. i. 22, p. 455), attracted a constantly increasing multitude of Jewish immigrants. This same Ptolemy, after having subdued Phoenicia and Coele-Syria in the year 320, and taken Jerusalem also, it would seem, by a stratagem on a Sabbath day, transported many captives and hostages out of the whole country into Egypt; many, too, must have been sold at that time as slaves to the inhabitants of such a wealthy country as Egypt: see a statement in the book of Aristeas, at the end of Havercamp's edition of Josephus, ii. p. 104. In the same place, and in Josephus' Antt. xii. 1, Ptolemy is said to have armed 30,000 Jewish soldiers, placed them as garrisons in the fortresses, and granted them all the rights of Macedonian citizens (ἰσοπολιτεία). Ewald well says, History of the People of Israel, vol. iv. of second edition, p. 254: "When we further take into consideration, that, in addition to all other similar disasters which had previously befallen them, many Jews were removed to Egypt (especially by Ochus, after Egypt had been reconquered), we can easily explain how Ptolemy Philadelphus can be said to have liberated 100,000 Egyptian Jews. Aristeas' Book, p. 105." This much, at least, is proved by these various notices, - that, in order to understand how such a vast increase took place in the number of the Jews in Egypt, we do not need to regard them as the descendants of those who removed thither with Jeremiah, and so to question the fulfilment of the prophecy now before us. Jeremiah does not, of course, threaten with destruction all those Jews who live in Egypt, but only those who at that time went thither against the divine will, and there persevered in their idolatry. We do not know how great may have been the number of these immigrants, but they could hardly exceed two thousand, - perhaps, indeed, there were not so many. All these, as had been foretold them, may have perished in the conquest of Egypt by the Chaldeans, and afterwards, through the sword, famine, and pestilence; for the myriads of Jews in Egypt at the time of Ptolemy Lagi could easily have removed thither during the period of 250 years intermediate between the immigration in Jeremiah's time and the foundation of Alexandria, partly as prisoners and slaves, partly through voluntary settlement.