Jeremiah 49:11 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them, &c. The Chaldee paraphrast understands this of the Jews, to whom the following words do certainly belong, as if it contained God's promise to take care of their families, in that distressed and forlorn state to which the captivity had reduced them. Some, who apply it to the Edomites, understand it as spoken by way of irony, in which light they understand Isaiah 16:4. “But there is nothing in the context,” says Houbigant, “which can lead to this interpretation. I rather understand it as a prophecy; nor was it any thing wonderful that the conquerors should spare the little children and widows, from whom they had nothing to fear; nor that the Edomites should forsake both the one and the other, when compelled to a precipitate flight.” Or, it is a promise that God would not wholly destroy the race of Esau, but protect and preserve a remnant of them; and that, at the time when he sent these his judgments on the proud and self-confident, and all their boasted strength was cast down, the weak and helpless should be remembered by him, the Father of mercies.