Jeremiah in Egypt (ch43)

Following the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians and the subsequent murder of the governor Gedaliah, a large party of captives released by the Babylonians had been obliged by their escorts to exile themselves in Egypt, reaching the frontier city of Tahpenes in ch43 v7.

Jeremiah was with them. We do not know if he travelled with them under compulsion, or because he knew of no other settled communities, or because his most obvious duty was to offer them the word of the Lord wherever they went.

Yet Egypt was the last place that he would have wanted to go. He knew Egypt as a centre of idolatry and the scene of Israelite bondage. The Lord’s removal of Israel from Egypt was the defining point of the relationship. So the prophets agreed that Israel must at all costs avoid “returning” to Egypt. This was normally meant metaphorically, as when kings accepted the treacherous and unreliable support of an Egyptian alliance, or when gods of Egyptian origin were being imported and worshipped by the population at large. But now it was happening literally, the ultimate nightmare.

So Jeremiah’s warning prophecies continued. In ch43 vv8-13, he did some acting-out prophecy in the sight of the refugees. He was told to take some large stones and “hide them in the mortar in the pavement which is at the entrance to Pharaoh’s palace in Tahpenes”. He was apparently able to do this without Egyptian interference. Perhaps this area (“terrace” in the Jerusalem Bible) was under construction, so that the act looked like normal work. If the men of Judah were being employed in this work, Jeremiah would just have to come in and make a very ostentatious contribution.

Having got their attention, he then proclaimed that Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon would spread his canopy over these stones when he invaded Egypt. He would extend to Egypt the “sword, pestilence, and
captivity” which he had just been inflicting on Judah. He would also burn the temples of the Egyptian gods and take the gods captive. The obelisks at Heliopolis get a special mention. Scanty Babylonian records make it hard to tell how far a later Babylonian invasion might have got. Certainly Nebuchadnezzar never managed a complete conquest.

In ch44 vv1-14 there is a later diatribe against “all the Jews” who have spread over Egypt., at MIgdol, at Tahpenes, at Memphis, and in the land of Pathros. We don’t know where this was delivered or how it was distributed, but in the second half of the chapter he has to meet an angry assembly at Pathros.

The Lord reminds them of the evil that he had brought upon Jerusalem and all the cities of Judah, and goes over the reasons why. It was because of their persistent idolatry, even though the prophets had been sent to warn them. Why then, have they committed this additional great evil of exiling themselves in Egypt? It is evil because it leaves no “remnant” in the land, for the rebuilding of the community (v7). It is evil because it gives them even more opportunity to relapse into idolatry, by taking up the local gods. They have forgotten not just the wickedness of their fathers and of the dynasty of kings, but also “the wickedness of the king’s wives, your own wickedness and the wickedness of your wives”. Jeremiah may be stirring up a hornet’s nest by bringing the wives into the discussion.

Therefore the Lord announces that he will cut off all Judah in the land of Egypt, just as he previously cut them off in Judah. He will punish all “those [Jews] who live in the land of Egypt, pursuing them with the old trio of “the sword, famine and pestilence”, which they had been trying to escape. None of them will escape or survive, and they will certainly not, “except some fugitives”, succeed in returning to the land of Judah.

This is another thread that got accidentally omitted from its place in the series. Should have come in just before "Queen of heaven", which was the end of the narrative.