John Calvin Commentary Jeremiah 46:13

"The word that Jehovah spake to Jeremiah the prophet, how that Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon should come and smite the land of Egypt." — Jeremiah 46:13 (ASV)

The former prophecy concerned the slaughter of the Egyptian army, when Pharaoh came to assist the Assyrians, with whom he was then allied. But this prophecy extends further, for Jeremiah declares that the Egyptians themselves would have their turn. We know even from other Prophets that punishment had been pronounced against them (and Ezekiel pursues this subject through many chapters) because they had, by their enticements, deceived the people of God. God punished them not only for the evils by which they themselves had provoked his wrath, but also because they had corrupted the Jews and further confirmed them in their obstinacy.

We now perceive the Prophet's design: the meaning is that God, after executing his judgment on the Israelites and the Jews, would also become the judge of the Egyptians and of other nations. We must further observe that this prophecy was announced before the city was taken.

At that time, when the Egyptians were secure and the Jews, relying on their aid, thought themselves safe from Nebuchadnezzar's violence, this prophecy was delivered.

But we see again that the order of time is not observed concerning these prophecies, for he had spoken of the army's slaughter in the fourth year of Jehoiakim. It is probable, though the time is not specified here, that the destruction of Egypt had already been predicted by then.

For before Jeremiah began to carry out his prophetic office, Isaiah had spoken against Egypt. Ezekiel also, when an exile in Chaldea, at the same time confirmed Jeremiah's prophecies and said many more things against Egypt. We must, however, remark that Jeremiah had not prophesied only once about the ruin of Egypt, for after he was forcibly taken there, he confirmed, as we have seen before, what he had previously said.

Jeremiah, then, had predicted what we read here many years before the city was taken. But since the Jews disregarded what he had said before, he confirmed it again when he was in Egypt, though this was not without great danger to his life, for he spared neither the king nor the nation.

He then says that the word came to him concerning the coming of Nebuchadnezzar to smite the land of Egypt.

Until now, he has spoken of the punishment God inflicted on the Egyptians beyond their own kingdom, on the bank of the Euphrates. But now he records the punishment of Egypt itself. Nebuchadnezzar not only went to meet the Egyptians to drive them from his own borders, but also made an incursion into their kingdom. He plundered many cities and so afflicted the whole kingdom that the Egyptian king afterward reigned only, as it were, by his permission.