Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 47

Against the Philistines. —Here also we have, as in the preceding chapter, a message connected with Jeremiah 25:20. The Gaza of this verse is the Azzah of that, and the date is fixed at a time prior to Necho’s attack on that city. Writers who, like Hitzig, identify the Oadytis of Herod. ii. 159, 3:5, with Gaza, suppose his attack to have been made on his return from his victory at Carchemish. The date of the prophecy is thus fixed in the interval between the two events. Ezekiel 25:15 should be compared as a contemporary and parallel prediction.

Behold, waters rise up out of the north.— The reference to the north indicates that the invasion which the prophet contemplates is that of Nebuchadnezzar, not of Pharaoh-Necho. For the metaphor of the overflowing river see Jeremiah 46:7; Isaiah 8:7. For the land and all that is therein read, as in the margin, the land and the fulness thereof.

The fathers shall not look back to their children. —The selfishness of panic was to reach its highest point, and to crush out the instincts of natural affection. Even fathers would be content to save themselves, regardless of their children’s lives.

To cut off from Tyre and Sidon. —The two Phoenician cities are coupled with Philistia. Both, as occupying the seaboard of Palestine, were to suffer from Nebuchadnezzar’s invasion. Psalms 83:7 indicates that they were often in alliance. In the “helper that remaineth” we probably have a reference to the foreign mercenaries, especially the Philistines, employed by the two great commercial cities. “Caphtor” has been identified with Crete, Cyprus, Caria, Cappadocia, and the delta of the Nile. On the latter view, the name is held to be connected with Coptic.

Amos 9:7 points to a migration of the people known as Philistines from that region, and there is accordingly a touch of scorn in the way in which Jeremiah speaks of them as the mere “remnant of Caphtor.” In agreement with the first view, we find among David’s mercenaries the Cherethim and Pelethim (2 Samuel 8:18), the two names being probably modifications of Cretans and Philistines. The ethnological table of Genesis 10:14 connects both the Philistines and the Caphtorim with Mizraim or Egypt, and is, so far as it goes, in favor of the Egyptian identification.

Baldness is come upon Gaza. —This baldness is the outward sign of extreme mourning (Jeremiah 48:37; Isaiah 15:2–3), perhaps also of extreme desolation (Isaiah 7:20).

Ashkelon is cut off ... —It is perhaps better rendered, Ashkelon is speechless. The Septuagint apparently followed a different text, and gives “the remnant of the Anakim” instead of “the remnant of their valley.” Hitzig adopts this rendering, and connects it with the known fact that a remnant of the old gigantic non-Semitic race had taken refuge among the Philistines (1 Samuel 17:4; 2 Samuel 21:22; 1 Chronicles 20:5–8) after they had been driven from Hebron (Joshua 14:12–15; Joshua 15:13–14).

Others, without adopting the Septuagint reading, interpret the word rendered “their valley” as meaning, as in Isaiah 33:19, those who speak an unintelligible language, barbarians (Amakim), and suppose this form passed in the Septuagint into the more familiar form of Anakim.

The English version, however, is accepted by many critics, and may refer to Ashkelon and Gaza as the “remnant,” the last resource of the valley (Emek) or low-country of the Philistines, more commonly known as the Shephelah.

How long wilt thou cut thyself? —These words point to a ritual of supplication, like that of the priests of Baal in 1 Kings 18:28, as prevailing among the Philistines.