PoSTSOMPT. — The above note is left pre- cisely as it was written, February, 1881, in ignorance of Wiedemann's then recent dis- covery of a contemporary hieioglypbic in- scription which, as the report of the German Oriental Society expresses it, " ratifies the hitherto universally doubted fact of an in- vasion of Egypt by Nebueliadnezzar." The hieroglyphic narrative is supplemented and confirmed by two cuneiform reconls, and the combined results are as follows. In the thirty-seventh year of his reign, Hophra or Apries being King of Egypt, Nebuchad- nezcar undertook an expedition against Egypt, and penetrated as far as the island of Elephantine, and damaged the temple of Ohnum, which stood there. His army could not, however, pass the cataracts. At Syene the Egyptian troops, under Nes- hor, met and repelled the invaders. Two years later, however, the Babylonians came again, were victorious over the Egyptian host under Amasis, ard compelled the whole
JEBEUIAH — II
land to pay tribute. Thus we have a re- markable confirmation of Ezeklel's prophecy that Egypt should be " waste and desolate from Migilnl unto Syene, even unto the border of Ethiopia " (Ezek. xxix. 10). It should be mentioned that the Babylonians are not desciibcd in the hieroglyphics by their proper name, but as " the Syrians (?), the pBoples of the north, the Asiatics;" j* is from a terra-cotta cuneiform tablet thai we learn that, in Nobuoljadnczzar's thirty- seventh year (b.o. 5G8-7), a war arose bt- tween him and the King of Egypt, which ended with tlie payment nf tribute to tho former (Wiedemann, in 'jEgyptische Zeit- Bchrift,' 1878, pp. 2—6 and 87—89; 'Ge- BChichtp^gypteng,'lS80 pp.168— 170). Thf value of prophifoy dues not, happily, depend on the minuteness of its & irrespoudence with history, and the evidential value of the argument from such a correspondence is hut secondary. Still, as long as such a corre- spondence can be pioved, (.ven in part, hy facts such as Wiedejuann has discov. red, the apolou;iat is perfectly justified in using it in confirmation of the authority of Scrip- ture.
The second prophecy falls into two parts — vers. 14 — 19 and 20 — 26 respectively.
Vers. 14 — 19.— The cities of Egypt are called upon to prepare to meet the foe. But it is in vain; for all that is great and mighty in the land— Apis, the mercenary soldiers, and the Pharaoh — bows down before that terrible one who is comparable only to the must imposing objects in the inanimate worlJ. Pharaoh's time is over; and Egypt must go into captivity.
Ver. 14. — Declare ye ; viz. the approach of the foe (comp. ch. iv. 5). The news is to bo told in the frontier towns Migilol and Tali- panhes, and in the northern capital Noph iir Memphis (see on ch. ii. 16; xliv. 1). The sword shall devour, etc. ; rather, the siooi-d hath devoured those round nhout thee. Thi neighbouring nations (the same phrase occurs in ch. xlviii. 17, 39) have one after another succumbed ; no ally is left there.
Ver. 15. — Why are thy valiant men, etc.? The literal rendering of the received text is. Why is thy strong ones ((jlural) swept away (or, cast downi) ? He stood not, because Jehovah thrust him I It is true that the first half of the verse might, con- sistently with gramranr, be rendered, " Why are thy strong ones swtpt away ? " But the following singulars prove that the subject of the verb in the first verse- half must itself be a singular. We must, therefore, follow t!:e reading of the Sept\iagint, Vulgate, Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, and many of the extant Hebrew manuscripts, and chanire the plural "strong ones" into the singular
210
IHE BOOK OF THE PKOPHBT JEREMlAti. [ch. xlvl 1—28.
"strong one." The word so rendered ig elsewhere in Jeremiah one used (in the plural) of strong hurses (oh. Tiii. 16; xlvii. 3 ; 1. 11) ; but there is no necessity to bind ourselves to this acceptation. Other pos- sible meanings are (1) strong man, e.g. Judg. v. 22 and Lam. i. 15 ; (2) steer, bull, e.g. Ps. xxii. 13 and 1. 13, and (metapliorically of princes) Ixviii. 31. It is a tenable view thii t " thy strong one " is to be understood dis- tiibutively as equivalent to "every strong one of thine." But it is certainly more plausible to regard the phrase as a synonym for Apis, the sacred bull in which the supreme god Osiris was believed by the Egyptians to be incarnate. This was a superstition (strange, no doubt, but not so ignoble as some have thought) as deeply ingrained in the Egyptian mind as any in their compli- cated religion. " In fact, tliey believed that the supreme Qod was with them when they possessed a bull bearing certain hieratic narks, the signs of the incarnation of the divinity" (Pierret). His death was the signal for a mourning as general as for a Pharaoh, and the funeral ceremonies (ac- counts of which are given in the inscrip- tions) were equally splendid. M. Mariette lias discovered, in the neighbourhood of Memphis, a necropolis in which the Apis- bulls were successively interred from the eighteenth dynasty to the close of the period of the Ptolemies. For the Apis to be " swept away " like ordinary plunder, or " cast down " in the slaughtering-trougli (comp. Isa. xxziv. 7), was indeed a token that the glory of Egypt had departed. It is a singular coincidence that the very word here employed by Jeremiah for " bull " {abblr) was adopted (like many other words) into the Egyptian language — it received the slightly modified form ciber. The Septuagint, it should be added, is in favour of the general view of the verse thus obtained, and the authority of the Egyptian-Jewish version in a prophecy rela- tive to Egypt is not slight. Its rendrring of the flist half is, " Why hath Apis, thy chosen oalf, fled?" But the probability is that it read the Hebrew differently, " Why hath Khaph ( = Apis), thy chosen one, fled ? " This merely involves grouping some letters otherwise, and reading one word » little differently.
Ver. 16. — To foil ; rather, to ttumble. The fugitives are in such a wild confusion that they stumble over each other. The parallel passage in the earlier prophecy (ver. 12) suggests that the Egyptian warriors are here referred to, the most trustworthy portion of which, since the time of Psammetichus, was composed of mercenaries, the native troops having lost that military ardour for which they had
been anciently renownea (see Herod., ii. 152, and Sir Gardner Wilkinson's note ap. Raw- linson). Being devoid of patriotic feeling, it was natural that these hired soldiers should hasten from the doomed country, exclaiming, as the prophet puts it, Arise, and let us go again to our own people. Greeks were probably among the speakers, at any rate, lonians and Oarians formed the mercenary troops of Psammetichus, according to Herodotus (ii. 152).