1And it happened when Jeremiah finished speaking to the people all the words of the LORD their God which the LORD their God had sent to them, all these words, 2that Azariah son of Hoshaiah and Johanan son of Kareah and all the arrogant men said to Jeremiah, “You speak a lie! The LORD our God did not send you, saying, ‘You shall not go to Egypt to sojourn there.’ 3But Baruch son of Neriah is inciting you against us so as to give us into the hand of the Chaldeans to put us to death or to exile us to Babylonia.” 4And Johanan son of Kareah, and all the commanders of the troops and all the people with him, had not heeded the voice of the LORD to dwell in the land of Judah. 5And Johanan son of Kareah, and all the commanders of the troops with him, took all the remnant of Judah who had come back from all the nations where they were dispersed to sojourn in the land of Judah—6the men and the women and the children and the king’s daughters and every living person whom Nebuzaradan the high chamberlain had left with Gedaliah son of Ahikam, and Jeremiah the prophet and Baruch son of Neriah. 7And they came to the land of Egypt, as far as Tahpanes, for they had not heeded the voice of the LORD.
8And the word of the LORD came to Jeremiah in Tahpanes, saying, 9“Take in your hand large stones and bury them in mortar in the brickwork that is at the entrance of the house of Pharaoh in Tahpanes before the eyes of the Judahite men. 10And you shall say to them: Thus said the LORD of Armies, God of Israel. I am about to send and take Nebuchadrezzar My servant, king of Babylonia, and I will put his throne over these stones that I have buried, and he shall stretch out his splendor over them. 11And he shall come and strike the land of Egypt—who for death to death and who for captivity to captivity and who for the sword to the sword. 12And he shall set fire to the houses of the gods of Egypt, and he shall burn them and take them captive and wrap round the land of Egypt as a shepherd wraps himself in his garment, and he shall go out from there in safety. 13And he shall smash the obelisks of the House of the Sun that is in the land of Egypt, and the houses of the gods of Egypt he shall burn in fire.”
CHAPTER 43 NOTES
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1. all the words of the LORD their God. This narrative report continues the procedure of the preceding textual unit in affirming that YHWH is the God of these people—the very people who have rejected God’s word delivered by Jeremiah.
3. Baruch son of Neriah is inciting you against us. This is a surprising accusation. It may be founded merely in a paranoid suspicion that someone must have misled the prophet on whom they were counting to confirm their decision about going to Egypt. The alternative possibility is that they are loath to accuse Jeremiah directly and so make his amanuensis responsible for what he has done.
6. and Jeremiah the prophet and Baruch son of Neriah. These two crucial figures are left till the very end of the list of those who were taken down to Egypt. The implication would seem to be that Jeremiah and Baruch were taken against their will.
9. the house of Pharaoh in Tahpanes. Tahpanes, near the northern border of Egypt, was not the capital city, but there may have been some sort of royal palace there.
10. Nebuchadrezzar My servant. What this epithet indicates is that the Babylonian emperor is God’s instrument in history, which in the present instance involves the conquest of Egypt.
he shall stretch out his splendor over them. The noun shafrir appears only here. Because of the verb “stretch out,” some think it means “canopy” or “pavilion,” but it reflects a Hebrew root that indicates beauty, and so the general term “splendor” may be the safest translation.
12. he shall set fire. The Masoretic Text has “I will set fire,” but the Septuagint, the Syriac, and the Vulgate all show the third-person singular, making Nebuchadrezzar the subject of the verb. It is, of course, possible that the original text simply switched from God’s human agent to God.
take them captive. It was common to cart off the gods of a conquered land. Presumably, the wooden ones were burned and those with precious metals were taken away.
wrap round the land of Egypt. This slightly odd image is meant to indicate Nebuchadrezzar’s total domination of the country. The comparison to the shepherd wrapping himself in his garment suggests that the Babylonian conqueror will take warmth and comfort from appropriating the entire land.
13. obelisks. The Hebrew matseivot in Canaanite and Israelite settings refers to steles, sacred piles of stones, but in the Egyptian context these would have to be obelisks, which in fact have been found at this site in archaeological excavations.
the House of the Sun that is in the land of Egypt. The qualifying clause is introduced because there is a place in Canaan that bears this same name in Hebrew, Beyt Shemesh. The Septuagint renders this as “Heliopolis [Sun City] which is in On.” There was a cult of sun worship at On.