Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 49:38

"and I will set my throne in Elam, and will destroy from thence king and princes, saith Jehovah." — Jeremiah 49:38 (ASV)

I will set my throne in Elam. —The throne of Jehovah is, it is clear, the throne of the king who is, for the time, His chosen instrument and servant. In this case, therefore, it is the throne of Nebuchadnezzar (Jeremiah 43:10). Elam, like the other nations in Jeremiah 25:13-25 and Jeremiah 48 and 49, had apparently risen in rebellion against him. Of this, we have, perhaps, a trace in the statement of Judith 1:1-13, that Nebuchadnezzar defeated Arphaxad, a king of Media, in the seventeenth year of his reign.

The words find a historical fulfillment in the fact that Shushan, in the province of Elam, became one of the royal residences of the Chaldean kings (Daniel 8:2) and continued to be so under those of Persia, who, regarding the population of Elam proper, were as conquerors (Nehemiah 1:1; Esther 1:2). A similar prediction of the fall of Elam, among other nations, before the attack of the King of Babylon is found in Ezekiel 32:24.