Bible Commentaries

CHAPTER 43

1. The rebellion against Jeremiah (Jeremiah 43:1-7)

2. Jeremiah’s prediction about the conquest of Egypt (Jeremiah 43:8-13)

Jeremiah 43:1-7. No sooner had Jeremiah finished communicating the divine answer, but the captains and the proud men denounced him. They charged him that he spoke falsely, that all he had said was at the instigation of Baruch, that both were traitors. Then the leaders did not obey the voice of the Lord to dwell in the land; they took the remnant of Judah (Jeremiah 43:5 is explained by Jeremiah 40:11-12) all the people, including Jeremiah and Baruch, to lead them down to Egypt, and finally they settled in Tahpanhes (Daphne), which was in the northeastern part, on the road out of Egypt to Palestine.

Jeremiah 43:8-13. Then Jeremiah was commanded by the Lord to take great stones and bury them at the entry of Pharaoh’s house in Tahpanhes, so that all the men of Judah could be witnesses of it. In 1886 the Egyptologist, Professor Petrie, excavated at Tahpanhes a brick pavement before a kind of a palace, which probably was the place where Jeremiah hid the stones. The ruin was Kasr el BintJehudi, which means, “the palace of the daughter of Judah,” the place evidently assigned to the daughters of Zedekiah. (See Jeremiah 43:6.) The word brick-kiln means a pavement of bricks. Then, after having buried the stones, he announced that Nebuchadnezzar would come and set his throne there also, that he would conquer Egypt, smite it and burn the idol temples there. Such an invasion took place about 568 B.C., when the Egyptian King Amasis was defeated. The pillars mentioned in Jeremiah 43:13 are obelisks, and Beth-Shemesh means “the house of the Sun” (Heliopolis or On).