Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 46

The word of the Lord ... —We find here something like the traces of a plan in the arrangement of Jeremiah’s prophecies. Those that were concerned exclusively with the surrounding pagan nations were collected together, and attached as an appendix to those which were addressed directly to his own people. Most of those that follow were connected historically with Jeremiah 25:15-26, and may be regarded as the development of what is given there in outline, and belong accordingly to the reign of Jehoiakim (circ. B.C. 607).

Against Egypt, against the army of Pharaoh-necho. —This Egyptian king was the last of its great native sovereigns. He was the sixth king of the twenty-sixth dynasty of Manetho, succeeded his father Psammetichus in B.C. 610, and reigned for sixteen years. Herodotus (ii. 158, 159) relates that among his chief achievements was his endeavor to connect the Nile with the Red Sea, an enterprise that anticipated the Suez Canal. However, he was stopped by an oracle and then sent a fleet of Phoenician ships to circumnavigate Africa. One hundred and twenty thousand lives were reportedly sacrificed in the former enterprise. After abandoning this project, 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 smaller than Sardis.

Some writers have identified this with the capture of Jerusalem in 2 Chronicles 36:3, considering the name Cadytis equivalent to Kadusha (meaning "the holy city"), thus anticipating the modern Arabic name El-Khuds. Herodotus, however (iii. 5), describes it as near the coast, and this has led to its identification with Gaza, Kedesh-Naphtali, or a Hittite city—Ketesh—on the Orontes, near where the great commercial and military road turned off towards Damascus and the Euphrates. In any case, it was during this invasion, directed against the Babylonian Empire then ruled by Nabopolassar (Nebuchadnezzar's father), that Necho defeated and slew Josiah at Megiddo (2 Chronicles 35:20–24), deposed Jehoahaz, and appointed Jehoiakim (2 Chronicles 36:4).

Accordingly, some writers (R. S. Poole, in Smith’s Dict. Bible, Art. Pharaoh-necho) identify Megiddo with the Magdolus of Herodotus. Necho's army advanced and took the city of Carchemish, which some (Hitzig) identify with Circesium, an island formed by the confluence of the Chaboras and the Euphrates, while others (Rawlinson) identify it with a Hittite city, now Jerablus (a corruption of the Greek Hierapolis), much higher up the Euphrates. (See Note on Isaiah 10:9). After this capture, Necho appears to have returned to Egypt. Three years later (B.C. 606), Carchemish was retaken by Nebuchadnezzar, resulting in the almost total defeat of Necho’s army, as Necho himself had already returned to Egypt. It is this defeat that Jeremiah now describes, as if in a song of anticipated triumph over the downfall of the Egyptian oppressor.

Order ye the buckler and shield ... —The poem opens with a summons to the hosts of Nebuchadnezzar to prepare for their victory. First the foot-soldiers are called, then the horse, lastly the light-armed troops.

Put on the brigandines. —The history of the word is not without interest. Light-armed skirmishers were known in Italian as “brigands” (briganti—literally, “quarrellers”); the light coat of mail worn by them was accordingly known as a “brigandine.” When the Italian word became synonymous with robbers by land or sea, the ship used by them was called a brigantino, and from this is derived our English “brig” (W. A. Wright: Bible Word Book). The word “brigandine” is accordingly used by writers of the sixteenth century in both senses: by Spenser, for a ship—

“Like as a warlike brigandine applied
To fight;”

and by Milton—

“Then put on all your gorgeous arms, your helmet
And brigandine or brass”

(Sams. Agonist., 1120)—in the same sense as here and in Jeremiah 51:3.

Wherefore have I seen them dismayed ...? —The prophet speaks as seeing already in his mind’s eye the confusion of the defeated army, with no way to escape, driven back on the Euphrates. In fear round about (Magor-missabib) we have one of his characteristic formulæ (Jeremiah 6:25; Jeremiah 20:3; Jeremiah 20:10; Jeremiah 49:29).

Who is this that cometh up as a flood? ... — The Hebrew word for “flood” is used as a proper name almost exclusively (Daniel 12:5–6 being the only exception) for the Nile (for example, Genesis 41:1–3; Exodus 2:3; Exodus 4:9; Amos 8:8; Amos 9:5), and therefore the very form of the question points to the answer that follows.

The prophet goes back, as an English poet might have done after the destruction of the Spanish Armada, to the time when all the strength of Egypt had been poured forth in the exultation of anticipated victory, as the great river of Egypt poured its waters.

The word for “rivers,” though more general, has a similar allusive reference, being used in Exodus 7:19; Exodus 8:5 and Ezekiel 32:2; Ezekiel 32:14 for the arms or canals of the Nile.