Who is this that cometh up as a flood, whose waters are moved as the rivers?
The verse stands within the word against the Gentiles, among the prophecies concerning the kingdoms surrounding Israel whose doom is pronounced, specifically as part of the prophecy concerning Egypt in Jeremiah 46:6-10. The chapter does not stand in chronological order in the book, having been displaced after Jeremiah 20 when the manuscript rolls were gathered into one book, which makes no change in the teaching, and the chapter itself shows its own time. In chronological order chapter 46 comes after chapters 40 to 45 and chapter 47, at the close of the work in Judah.
The flood image portrays Egypt coming up in power by the inundation of the Nile, rising like the Nile whose waters surge like rivers. The moving waters are its people and power, and the nation's river and flood imagery represents the nation itself, for verse 8 explains the image as Egypt's ambition to spread over the earth and destroy a city and its inhabitants and cities. In prophetic imagery, great rivers represent the countries and governments associated with them.
The prophecy foretold that Egypt would fall before the mighty conqueror Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and belongs to the Bible description of the revolutions and future state of Egypt. Though Egypt was ancient and powerful, made most defensible by the Red Sea and trackless desert, able to defend the mouths of her river with a powerful navy and to drown an invading army by the Nile, it would be invaded and subdued by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. Then it was subjected by the Persians under Cambyses and by the Macedonians under Alexander, ruled by the Ptolemies, then brought under the Roman yoke and successively ruled by Saracens, Mamelukes and Turks, deprived of her natural proprietors for twenty-three centuries, ruled by strangers and slaves with no more a prince of the land, made the basest of the kingdoms never again to rule over the nations, with idols and images ceasing out of Noph and rivers drying up, proving prophecy true. Egypt is presented as a leading type of organized opposition to God's kingdom, associated with the restless waters of the world.
The north country identified with the river Euphrates where the swift cannot flee and the mighty fall designates the Ottoman empire, so the north country and the king of the north are Turkey. The verse shows the rise of the Ottoman empire when the waters of the Turkish nation surged and spread, and the drying up of those same waters is the destruction of the Turkish empire that signals universal war. This is placed in the day of the Lord God of hosts, a day of vengeance when the sword devours and is satiate and made drunk with blood and the Lord has a sacrifice in the north country, language that refers to the end of the world. Understanding the Turkish question of today requires going back to that time of rising and becoming familiar with things from the Mohammedan standpoint. The verse also pictures a modern deception rising like a flooding river out of Egypt and spreading into the field in Asia Minor at Erzingan. The flood is false teaching that clouds the mind, and the mind is cleared from it when a person humbles himself to study the Bible, while those who harden their hearts and refuse to study the Bible and pray together remain under its power.
The verse stands within the word against the Gentiles, among the prophecies concerning the kingdoms surrounding Israel whose doom is pronounced, specifically as part of the prophecy concerning Egypt in Jeremiah 46:6-10. The chapter does not stand in chronological order in the book, having been displaced after Jeremiah 20 when the manuscript rolls were gathered into one book, which makes no change in the teaching, and the chapter itself shows its own time. In chronological order chapter 46 comes after chapters 40 to 45 and chapter 47, at the close of the work in Judah.
The flood image portrays Egypt coming up in power by the inundation of the Nile, rising like the Nile whose waters surge like rivers. The moving waters are its people and power, and the nation's river and flood imagery represents the nation itself, for verse 8 explains the image as Egypt's ambition to spread over the earth and destroy a city and its inhabitants and cities. In prophetic imagery, great rivers represent the countries and governments associated with them.
The prophecy foretold that Egypt would fall before the mighty conqueror Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and belongs to the Bible description of the revolutions and future state of Egypt. Though Egypt was ancient and powerful, made most defensible by the Red Sea and trackless desert, able to defend the mouths of her river with a powerful navy and to drown an invading army by the Nile, it would be invaded and subdued by Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon. Then it was subjected by the Persians under Cambyses and by the Macedonians under Alexander, ruled by the Ptolemies, then brought under the Roman yoke and successively ruled by Saracens, Mamelukes and Turks, deprived of her natural proprietors for twenty-three centuries, ruled by strangers and slaves with no more a prince of the land, made the basest of the kingdoms never again to rule over the nations, with idols and images ceasing out of Noph and rivers drying up, proving prophecy true. Egypt is presented as a leading type of organized opposition to God's kingdom, associated with the restless waters of the world.
The north country identified with the river Euphrates where the swift cannot flee and the mighty fall designates the Ottoman empire, so the north country and the king of the north are Turkey. The verse shows the rise of the Ottoman empire when the waters of the Turkish nation surged and spread, and the drying up of those same waters is the destruction of the Turkish empire that signals universal war. This is placed in the day of the Lord God of hosts, a day of vengeance when the sword devours and is satiate and made drunk with blood and the Lord has a sacrifice in the north country, language that refers to the end of the world. Understanding the Turkish question of today requires going back to that time of rising and becoming familiar with things from the Mohammedan standpoint. The verse also pictures a modern deception rising like a flooding river out of Egypt and spreading into the field in Asia Minor at Erzingan. The flood is false teaching that clouds the mind, and the mind is cleared from it when a person humbles himself to study the Bible, while those who harden their hearts and refuse to study the Bible and pray together remain under its power.