Jeremiah 46:13
The word that the LORD spake to Jeremiah the prophet, how Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon should come and smite the land of Egypt. The word that the LORD spake to Jeremiah the prophet, how Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon should come and smite the land of Egypt.
Jeremiah 46:13 belongs to the pronouncements of doom upon the kingdoms surrounding Israel, a section that begins with Egypt. It stands with prophecies against Moab, Ammon, Edom, Damascus and Elam sharing the same fate. It is set among the closing chapters of Jeremiah dealing with his personal experiences and his going into Egypt.
In chronological order the verse stands at the end of Jeremiah, after chapter 47 and after chapters 40 to 45. The prophecies are not placed in chronological order because the manuscript rolls were gathered into one book out of order. The displacement makes no change in the teaching, and the chapter itself makes its chronology clear.
The verse is the word of the Lord spoken to Jeremiah the prophet that Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon would come and strike, invade, defeat, conquer and spoil the land of Egypt. It declares that Egypt would fall and be brought down before the mighty conqueror. The smiting is a literal military attack, fulfilled when Egypt was invaded, subdued and conquered by Babylon. The prophecy also identifies where Nebuchadrezzar would establish his standard in the capital of Egypt.
When the verse was given, Egypt was one of the most ancient and powerful kingdoms in the world, with eighteen hundred cities and seventeen millions of inhabitants. It was the most defensible country in the world, bounded by the Red Sea and trackless desert. It was able to defend the mouths of its river with a powerful navy and to drown an invading army by the inundation of the Nile, so that its conquest and perpetual subjection to strangers seemed unlikely.
Its fulfillment began a long history of Egypt falling into the hands of strangers and becoming the lowest of the kingdoms. It was afterward subjected by the Persians under Cambyses and by the Macedonians under Alexander the Great, then ruled by the Ptolemies, Romans, Saracens, Mamelukes and Turks. There was no more a prince of its own, its idols ceased, and its people were left in poverty and servitude, proving the truth of the prophecy. The verse is an example of prophecy foretelling the history of a nation.