Jeremiah 46:13-28--Judgment on Egypt

Jeremiah 46:13-28
English Standard Version
​
13 The word that the LORD spoke to Jeremiah the prophet about the coming of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon to strike the land of Egypt:

14 “Declare in Egypt, and proclaim in Migdol;
    proclaim in Memphis and Tahpanhes;
say, ‘Stand ready and be prepared,
    for the sword shall devour around you.’
15 Why are your mighty ones face down?
    They do not stand
    because the LORD thrust them down.
16 He made many stumble, and they fell,
    and they said one to another,
‘Arise, and let us go back to our own people
    and to the land of our birth,
    because of the sword of the oppressor.’
17 Call the name of Pharaoh, king of Egypt,
    ‘Noisy one who lets the hour go by.’

18 “As I live, declares the King,
    whose name is the LORD of hosts,
like Tabor among the mountains
    and like Carmel by the sea, shall one come.
19 Prepare yourselves baggage for exile,
    O inhabitants of Egypt!
For Memphis shall become a waste,
    a ruin, without inhabitant.

20 “A beautiful heifer is Egypt,
    but a biting fly from the north has come upon her.
21 Even her hired soldiers in her midst
    are like fattened calves;
yes, they have turned and fled together;
    they did not stand,
for the day of their calamity has come upon them,
    the time of their punishment.

22 “She makes a sound like a serpent gliding away;
    for her enemies march in force
and come against her with axes
    like those who fell trees.
23 They shall cut down her forest,
declares the LORD,
    though it is impenetrable,
because they are more numerous than locusts;
    they are without number.
24 The daughter of Egypt shall be put to shame;
    she shall be delivered into the hand of a people from the north.”

25 The LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, said: “Behold, I am bringing punishment upon Amon of Thebes, and Pharaoh and Egypt and her gods and her kings, upon Pharaoh and those who trust in him. 26 I will deliver them into the hand of those who seek their life, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and his officers. Afterward Egypt shall be inhabited as in the days of old, declares the LORD.

27 “But fear not, O Jacob my servant,
    nor be dismayed, O Israel,
for behold, I will save you from far away,
    and your offspring from the land of their captivity.
Jacob shall return and have quiet and ease,
    and none shall make him afraid.
28 Fear not, O Jacob my servant,
declares the LORD,
    for I am with you.
I will make a full end of all the nations
    to which I have driven you,
    but of you I will not make a full end.
I will discipline you in just measure,
    and I will by no means leave you unpunished.”

---

Jeremiah makes it clear that Babylon is not only coming against Judah and Jerusalem, but will conquer the once-great empire of Egypt as well.  There will be great death and destruction and the mighty will be humiliated by the LORD (not by Babylon), as it will be evident that this is the work of the LORD and this is the Babylonians are executing His judgment and justice.  They worshiped the Pharaoh as a god and the LORD taunts them to cry out to Pharaoh to see if he can save them--spoiler alert:  Pharaoh cannot do what the LORD alone can do.

The LORD declares that He is the one true King of heaven and earth and all that is in them.  He then tells the people of Egypt that thought they were strong enough, powerful enough, wealthy enough, numerous enough and far enough away to be safe from Babylon that they will be just like the other places that have been destroyed and taken into exile.  The LORD tells them to start packing their bags.  Great cities like Memphis will be destroyed and become uninhabited ruins.

The LORD tells Egypt that their soldiers and mercenaries will run from battle.  They will not fight against Nebuchadnezzar's army of Chaldeans.  Now is the time for Egypt to be punished for their many, many years of immorality, idolatry, sorcery, necromancy (just to name a few things).  Egypt is not known for being a land of lush forests--it is mostly desert with the Nile River Delta (the land of Goshen) and the entire Nile River valley really being the only places suitable for growing anything.  However, there must have been some forests there at this time as Babylon was going to come in and cut all the trees down.  This would have the effect of turning what might have once been fertile land into a desert.  The forest apparently used to be so thick that the Egyptians thought it provided a natural wall of defense against invasion, but the Babylonians would not be deterred and were so numerous that they would cut down every tree in this "wall" of trees and every protection that Egypt believed it had would be stripped away (most to never return again).

This judgment is being declared specifically against the false gods the Egyptians worshiped--specifically Amon of Thebes and Pharaoh, but also all the other false gods as well.  Just like with the Ten Plagues, the gods were really the ones being attacked by the LORD and they were tested and failed.  None of these gods nor the Pharaoh of Egypt could deliver the people of Egypt from the LORD's judgment.  The LORD would give them over for a time to the Babylonians, but the land of Egypt would eventually be populated again like it was before exile (though it would never again be the super-power that it once was).

This message was not just for the people of Egypt to give them a chance to repent, but also for the people of Judah that thought that Egypt would be their salvation.  Salvation belongs to the LORD and Him alone.  The people were not to trust in Egypt to save them.  The LORD was also going to eventually return the people of Judah to their ancestral land.  They would have a time of peace and rest (we don't really see that historically, so I think this is talking about the Millennial Kingdom in the future--there have been relative times of peace, but it seems like in every generation there has been someone on a genocidal mission to exterminate the Jewish people because Satan hates God's people and wants to try to prevent Him from keeping His covenant promises to His people).  To my Covenant Theology friends who may be reading this, Satan is an excellent student of the Bible's prophecies and the theology that it teaches.  If "replacement theology" were correct, then why does Satan continue to try to exterminate the Jewish people in every generation if doing so would not give the LORD a "black eye" of any kind?  If the Church has truly replaced Israel and there is no Israel today that is "the people of God" and "true Israel" is simply equivalent to "The Church" or "The Body of Christ," than why would Satan attack the Jews instead of using them to attack the "real" people of God (the Church)?  We don't see Jewish terrorist bombing "Christian" settlements, places of worship and schools--we see other groups doing that, but those same groups are also attacking Jewish settlements, places of worship, schools, hospitals, etc.  It seems that Satan very much believes that the Jewish people are still under a covenant of some kind with the LORD that has yet to be fulfilled (for instance, the Jewish people have never had complete ownership of the entire land promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob--only a small portion of it, even when their kingdom was its largest under King Solomon).  Maybe that explains a bit why everyone in the world wants to take Israel's land away from them in false "land for peace" deals--the devil does not want the Jewish people to even come close to owning all the Land they were promised and in fact wants them to loose all the land that was eternally promised to them so that the LORD will be made out to be a liar.  The LORD says here that isn't going to happen.  One day, they will be fully restored to the Land and own every square inch that was covenanted to them.

The LORD is going to discipline His children because He loves them.  The discipline will be painful, but only temporary, and it should make them love their Heavenly Father more.  A good father sets good boundaries for His children, makes those boundaries known, and disciplines them when they cross those boundaries because those boundaries are for their own good and protection.  A father who never disciplines his children does not love them, the Bible says he hates them.  The LORD does not express the same kind of relationship with the people of Egypt, though we know they are one of the three allied nations in the end--Israel, Egypt, and Assyria will all be God-fearing and will worship the LORD and proclaim His glory throughout the earth.  However, Egypt and Assyria will recognize the special relationship that the LORD has with Israel.  The LORD is going to put an end to the wicked Gentile nations (He will do a great work in Assyrian and Babylon and even Egypt, but that is something to talk about another day)--never again will those nations threaten them and all the superpowers of this world throughout the ages will be destroyed by The Kingdom of God (see Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the statue and the rock that turns into a mountain).  The LORD will discipline His children and will not let them go unpunished, but He is not out to destroy them like He is with many of these Gentile nations.  He will purify His people and save a remnant that will be used to accomplish His plans and purposes (without the Jewish people, we would not have any of the Bible that we have today as the LORD chose to bring the gospel tot the Jewish people first and then for them to take the gospel to ends of the earth).  We should love the Jewish people and desire their salvation and seek to bless them in every way we can personally, corporately and as a nation, and we should be careful about following anyone who hates the Jewish people, ignores the special covenant relationship the LORD has with them, or implies in any way that the LORD has broken His eternal, unconditional covenant with them (even if they try to use legalese to say the covenant wasn't broken, but replaced).  What you believe about the LORD's covenant with the nation of Israel has a great impact on how you interpret past, present and even future events.  It is a question to give careful consideration to, but I will warn you that you should be careful about anyone who bases their entire argument on someone else's commentary of the Scriptures--they will try to tell you that if only you read enough books by particular authors or had the right set of commentaries or had the right study bible with the kind of footnotes that they agree with that you too would believe like they did.  God gave us the Holy Spirit to lead us in all truth and to bring to memory the Scripture that He had written.  He told us that the Holy Spirit would make all things clear to us, so, where there are issues that are not clear to us, we need to ask the Author, not the commentator the meaning of the text.  There was a time when Covenant Theology was understandably popular because after 70 A.D. there was no real nation-state of Israel and the Jewish people were dispersed throughout the entire world until after World War 2.  Israel was made a nation again in a day just like the LORD said they would be.  Now, many of the Bible prophecies that were centered around the Jews, the Temple, and Jerusalem make more sense.  There is still not a Third Temple that we know has be present during the Tribulation (it could be built before or during the Tribulation, but we know it must be there at the midpoint).

Understanding the Bible through the lens of the different covenants is often extremely helpful and is not something that I am disagreeing with when I speak of Covenant Theology, but there is a form of Covenant Theology that people often speak of when they call themselves Reformed in their theology that believes that each new covenant supersedes the previous covenant and nullifies what came before it (this goes against the clear teaching of Jesus that Jesus did not come to abolish the Law (the Mosaic Covenant), but to fulfill it.  If Jesus intended to abolish the Old Covenant when He made the New Covenant, then this was a lie, and Jesus sinned and He cannot be the propitiation for our sins--like I said, what you believe about this has grave theological consequences).  I also don't give myself over totally to what the Strict Dispensationalism that many times those of the Covenant/Reformed persuasion would seem to think is the only other option.  Let's be fair and talk about where they are right in their arguments against the absurd viewpoint that there is a "God of the Old Testament" (a "God of Wrath") and a "God of the New Testament" (a "God of Grace").  That's pure malarkey.  "God is the same yesterday, today, and forever."  He is 100% of everything He is in all places at all times.  He had as much grace in the Old Testament as He does in the New Testament (see Palm 51 where David says there is no sacrifice He can make to appease the LORD's righteous wrath and instead prays for forgiveness and for the LORD to give Him a new heart.  That sounds like David understood that people were saved just as much "by grace through faith" in the Old Testament as they are in the New Testament.  We also see that there is judgment and wrath in the New Testament, that God is holy, and that we are not to try to play games with Him.  However, there are some different covenants in play that show us that God has chosen to operate with His people differently as He has progressively revealed Himself to them and He wanted to emphasize different things about His character and nature and His relationship with His covenant people  There seems to be a position that does not favor either extreme and, like most of the time, such positions often go without a name because it is the extreme positions that get attention and get named.  I encourage you to take a biblical position that you can defend with Scripture and that doesn't make you become a theological contortionist to explain what God meant to be the clear meaning of Scripture as something other than what it clearly says (The Scripture was given to us for our knowledge and edification--God meant us to be able to understand it and teach it to others).  I'll probably write more about this when I take up the bigger issue of Eschatology in my Faith and Culture blog at some point in the future, but it's important to discuss it now as we are in the midst of the books of Prophecy of the Old Testament and I assure you that Dispensationalists and Covenant Theologians read and interpret these passages very differently (literal verses allegorical or metaphorical interpretations).  I have already written some about Biblical Hermeneutics and there's a whole series of lessons on that under the Bible Study Tools tab (made available by Pastor Stephen Felker).  I know there will be differences of opinion in how to interpret a text like this, and I wanted to point to the root of those differences and explain that I understand that my viewpoint on Eschatology coming from a more Dispensational viewpoint greatly affects how I'd read a passage like this (because I believe in a coming Millennial Kingdom that will fulfil these covenant promises made to the Jewish people and it will not be the same as the eternal home for all believers).  More passages will that will give us opportunity to talk about this and I plan to write one or more Faith and Culture blog articles specifically on this topic in the future, but I will also entertain questions in the form of "What can you point to in the Bible that makes you believe that?"  Those kinds of questions are always welcome by email or through Discord.  I may not be able to respond immediately, but I promise that I will try to answer any Bible-based questions and if for some reason I can't answer it myself, I will also say that I am neither a prophet nor apostle and do not claim to give any new revelation or speak with the same authority as Scripture.  If you find that my views ever diverge from Scripture, Scripture is right, and I am wrong.  Since the Word of God alone is infallible because it's source is the LORD and He is infallible, then we would do well to realize that Scripture contains all that we need for life and godliness and stick as close to the Scripture as we can in all areas of worldview and not hold on tightly to personal opinions or the opinions of other men (even very intelligent men) who are not Christ, nor a prophet, nor an apostle (and see what the Scripture has to say about anyone who calls themselves Christ, and apostle or a prophet and weigh what they say against the infallible, unchanging Scripture that the LORD has given to us).  I understand that I may have stepped on a few toes today, and if you want to talk to me about that, I'll be happy to speak to you too--feel free to contact me on Discord or Facebook or email if you have my contact info.