Jeremiah 46:5
Wherefore have I seen them dismayed and turned away back? and their mighty ones are beaten down, and are fled apace, and look not back: for fear was round about, saith the LORD. Wherefore have I seen them dismayed and turned away back? and their mighty ones are beaten down, and are fled apace, and look not back: for fear was round about, saith the LORD.
The verse belongs to Jeremiah 46 to 51, the prophecies against the foreign nations surrounding Israel that pronounce their doom, especially Babylon's. Within that collection it is part of the prophecy concerning Egypt found in the closing chapters of Jeremiah connected with his own personal experiences and his going into Egypt.
It pictures Egypt's army in panic and defeat, its soldiers dismayed and turned back, its mighty warriors beaten down and struck down in battle. They flee swiftly without looking back while fear is round about them, a rout and overthrow the Lord Himself brings upon them.
The defeat is Egypt's fall before the mighty conqueror Nebuchadnezzar, specifically the rout of the Egyptian army at Carchemish where its forces turned back and fled in confusion overwhelmed by fear. It means Egypt would be invaded, conquered and spoiled and fall into the hand of strangers, fulfilled when Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon invaded and subdued it. Afterward it was successively subjected by Persians, Macedonians, Romans, Saracens, Mamelukes and Turks, deprived of its natural proprietors and native princes and made the basest of the kingdoms to rule no more over the nations, with its idols destroyed and its land wasted.