Jeremiah 47:4 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

To cut off from Tyrus and Zidon every helper, &c. The siege of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar was an action famous in the histories of that age, the siege lasting thirteen years. Zidon was partaker of the same fate with Tyre, both in prosperity and adversity: see Isaiah 23:2; Isaiah 23:4. And her destruction is joined with that of Tyre by Ezekiel chap. 28. The remnant of the country of Caphtor Or, the isle of Caphtor; called the remnant of the Philistines, Amos 1:8; and the remnant of the sea-coast, Ezekiel 25:16. The expression denotes either a colony transplanted from Caphtor, or else that small remainder of the Philistines, after they had been almost all destroyed in former times, according to the judgments denounced against them by Amos 1:8, and Isaiah 14:19, &c., Caphtor, or Caphtorim, were the ancient inhabitants of Palestine: see Deuteronomy 2:23. The Caphtorim and Casluhim were two neighbouring nations, and nearly related to each other, being both descended from Misraim the father of the Egyptians: see Genesis 10:13-14; which may be the reason why Moses there derives the pedigree of the Philistines from the latter of these two. The ancients generally suppose Caphtor to be the same with Cappadocia. These two nations might go out of Egypt, their native soil, and settle themselves in Cappadocia, where they passed under the general appellation of Caphtorim, and afterward return back to their own native country, and settle in Palestine.