This enthusiasm for ancient custom and tradition was not likely to commend the Egypt of Jeremiah's age to any student of Hebrew history. He would be reminded that the dealings of the Pharaohs with Israel had almost always been to its hurt; he would remember the Oppression and the Exodus--how, in the time of Solomon, friendly intercourse with Egypt taught that monarch lessons in magnificent tyranny, how Shishak plundered the Temple, how Isaiah had denounced the Egyptian alliance as a continual snare to Judah. A Jewish prophet would be prompt to discern the omens of coming ruin in the midst of renewed prosperity on the Nile.
Accordingly at the first great crisis of the new international system, in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, either just before or just after the battle of Carchemish--it matters little which--Jeremiah takes up his prophecy against Egypt. First of all, with an ostensible friendliness which only masks his bitter sarcasm, he invites the Egyptians to take the field:--
"Prepare buckler and shield, and draw near to battle. Harness the horses to the chariots, mount the chargers, stand forth armed cap-à-pie for battle; Furbish the spears, put on the coats of mail."
This great host with its splendid equipment must surely conquer. The prophet professes to await its triumphant return; but he sees instead a breathless mob of panic-stricken fugitives, and pours upon them the torrent of his irony:--
"How is it that I behold this? These heroes are dismayed and have turned their backs; Their warriors have been beaten down; They flee apace, and do not look behind them: Terror on every side--is the utterance of Jehovah."
Then irony passes into explicit malediction:--
"Let not the swift flee away, nor the warrior escape; Away northward, they stumble and fall by the river Euphrates."
Then, in a new strophe, Jeremiah again recurs in imagination to the proud march of the countless hosts of Egypt:--
"Who is this that riseth up like the Nile, Whose waters toss themselves like the rivers? Egypt riseth up like the Nile, His waters toss themselves like the rivers. And he saith, I will go up and cover the land"
(like the Nile in flood);
"I will destroy the cities and their inhabitants"
(and, above all other cities, Babylon).
Again the prophet urges them on with ironical encouragement:--
"Go up, ye horses; rage, ye chariots; Ethiopians and Libyans that handle the shield, Lydians that handle and bend the bow"
(the tributaries and mercenaries of Egypt).
Then, as before, he speaks plainly of coming disaster:
"That day is a day of vengeance for the Lord Jehovah Sabaoth, whereon He will avenge Him of His adversaries"
(a day of vengeance upon Pharaoh Necho for Megiddo and Josiah).
"The sword shall devour and be sated, and drink its fill of their blood: For the Lord Jehovah Sabaoth hath a sacrifice in the northern land, by the river Euphrates."
In a final strophe, the prophet turns to the land left bereaved and defenceless by the defeat at Carchemish:--
"Go up to Gilead and get thee balm, O virgin daughter of Egypt: In vain dost thou multiply medicines; thou canst not be healed. The nations have heard of thy shame, the earth is full of thy cry: For warrior stumbles against warrior; they fall both together."
Nevertheless the end was not yet. Egypt was wounded to death, but she was to linger on for many a long year to be a snare to Judah and to vex the righteous soul of Jeremiah. The reed was broken, but it still retained an appearance of soundness, which more than once tempted the Jewish princes to lean upon it and find their hands pierced for their pains. Hence, as we have seen already, Jeremiah repeatedly found occasion to reiterate the doom of Egypt, of Necho's successor, Pharaoh Hophra, and of the Jewish refugees who had sought safety under his protection. In the concluding part of chapter xlvi., a prophecy of uncertain date sets forth the ruin of Egypt with rather more literary finish than in the parallel passages.