Jeremiah 47:5 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Baldness is come upon Gaza; how long wilt thou cut thyself, &c. Under great calamities, and for the loss of any near kindred, it was usual for men to express their grief by shaving their heads, and cutting their flesh. Instead of Ashkelon is cut off, &c., Blaney reads, Ashkelon is put to silence, observing, that “silence likewise is expressive of great affliction. Thus Job's friends are said to have sat with him seven days and seven nights upon the ground without addressing a word to him, because they saw his grief was very great, Job 2:13. And so the Hebrew word here used, נדמה, is to be understood, (Isaiah 15:1,) of Moab's being made speechless with grief and astonishment the night that its cities were spoiled: see chap. Jeremiah 48:2.” With the remnant of their valley Instead of this interpretation, the LXX. read οι καταλοιποι Ενακιμ, the remnant of the Anakims. And this reading may be thought to derive some countenance from what is said Joshua 11:22. But we shall see reason to prefer the present reading of the text, if we consider the situation of Gaza and Ashkelon, about twelve miles distant from each other, near the sea, in a valley, of whose beauty and fertility an accurate traveller has given the following description: “We passed this day through the most pregnant and pleasant valley that ever eye beheld. On the right hand a ridge of high mountains; (whereon stands Hebron;) on the left hand the Mediterranean sea; bordered with continued hills, beset with variety of fruits. The champaign between, about twenty miles over, full of flowery hills, ascending leisurely, and not much surmounting their ranker valleys; with groves of olives, and other fruits, dispersedly adorned.” Sandys's Travels, book 3. p. 150. The author adds, that in his time, “this wealthy bottom (as are all the rest) was, for the most part, uninhabited, but only for a few small and contemptible villages” a state of desolation, owing to the oppressions of a barbarous and ill-advised government. But we may easily conceive the populousness that must have prevailed there in its better days, especially if we consider the power which the Philistines once possessed, and the armies they brought into the field; although their country was scarcely forty English miles in length, and much longer than it was broad. Blaney.