Jeremiah 46:11
Go up into Gilead, and take balm, O virgin, the daughter of Egypt: in vain shalt thou use many medicines; for thou shalt not be cured. Go up into Gilead, and take balm, O virgin, the daughter of Egypt: in vain shalt thou use many medicines; for thou shalt not be cured.
The oracle stands among the prophecies against foreign nations in the closing chapters of the book, directed particularly against Egypt. Those closing chapters gather personal experiences and the going down into Egypt. Its language works by striking figures of speech.
The placement is not in chronological order, the displacement having come when the manuscript rolls were gathered together into one book. That rearrangement makes no change in the teaching, and the chapter itself nearly always clearly indicates its own chronology. In chronological order chapter 46 comes after chapters 40 to 45 and chapter 47, near the last of the work in Judah.
The chapter lays open the future revolutions and state of Egypt. Though ancient and powerful and highly defensible by sea and desert and by navy and Nile, Egypt was to be invaded and conquered and spoiled by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. It was to fall into the hand of strangers forever, to become the basest of the kingdoms never again exalting itself or ruling over nations, and to renounce idolatry.
Spoken more than twenty-four centuries ago, that word has been fulfilled through successive subjection to Babylonians and Persians and Macedonians and Romans and Saracens and Mamelukes and Turks. The result has been Egypt left without a native prince in lasting servitude and poverty and desolation.
The title daughter of Egypt is a prophetic name for a wholly apostate people and church. It stands in contrast with the imagery of the true church. It is parallel to the daughter of Babylon and the daughter of the Chaldeans. It is opposite to the daughter of Zion and the daughter of Jerusalem, which denote the true church even when not fully pure but not wholly corrupt or wholly apostate.