Jeremiah 2:16 - Exposition

Also the children of Noph , etc . This is the climax of the calamity. Noph, called Moph in the Hebrew text of Hosea 9:6 , is generally identified with Memphis, which was called in the inscriptions Mennufr, or "the good abode," but may possibly be Napata, the Nap of the inscriptions, the residency of the Ethiopian dynasty (De Rouge'). Tahapanes . The Hebrew form is Takhpanes or Tahhpanhhes . This was a fortified frontier town on the Pelusiot arm of the Nile, called in Greek Daphnae (Herod; Hosea 2:20 ), or Taphnae. Have broken, etc.; rather, shall break , or (for the pointing in the Hebrew Bible requires this change) shall feed off (or depasture ). From this verse onwards, Judah is personified as a woman, as appears from the suffixes in the Hebrew. Baldness was a great mark of disgrace ( 2 Kings 2:23 ; Jeremiah 48:45 ). There is a striking parallel to this passage in Isaiah 7:18-20 , where, in punishment of the negotiations of Ahaz with Assyria, the prophet threatens an invasion of Judah both by Assyria and by Egypt: and employs the very. same figure (see Isaiah 7:20 ). So here, the devastation threatened by Jeremiah is the punishment of the unhallowed coquetting with the Egyptian power of which the Jewish rulers had been recently guilty. The fact which corresponds to this prediction is the defeat of Josiah at Megiddo, and the consequent subjugation of Judah ( 2 Kings 23:29 ). The abruptness with which verse 16 follows upon verse 15 suggests that some words have fallen out of the text.