Jeremiah 46:19
O thou daughter dwelling in Egypt, furnish thyself to go into captivity: for Noph shall be waste and desolate without an inhabitant. O thou daughter dwelling in Egypt, furnish thyself to go into captivity: for Noph shall be waste and desolate without an inhabitant.
The verse belongs to the prophecy concerning Egypt, one of the kingdoms surrounding Israel whose doom is pronounced from chapter 46 onward. It stands among the closing chapters of Jeremiah that cover Jeremiah's own personal experiences and his going into Egypt. It warns Egypt that it will go into captivity, and that Noph, which is ancient Memphis in Egypt, will be laid waste and left desolate without an inhabitant.
It foretells that Egypt would fall before the mighty conqueror Nebuchadnezzar. That foretelling was fulfilled when Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon invaded and subdued Egypt. Afterward Egypt was successively preyed upon and ruled by strangers — Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Greeks and Arabs, Georgians, Mamelukes and Ottoman Turks. It has remained for centuries the basest of kingdoms that no more rules over the nations, deprived of its natural proprietors and condemned to perpetual servitude under foreigners and slaves, with no middle class, sunk in poverty, ignorance, vermin and disease, with its idols cut off and its rivers drying up.
The ruins of Noph stand as an object lesson of fulfilled prophecy.