Jeremiah 42:17 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

So shall it be with all the men... — The words possibly imply that others were taking the same course as those who had applied to Jeremiah. There was something like a “rush” from many nations — Moab, Edom, and others (Jeremiah 27:3) — of fugitives, looking to Egypt as their one hope of safety against the Chaldæans, and joining with the Jews that had sought shelter in their respective territories (Jeremiah 40:11). We note in the prophet’s warning the recurrence of the old familiar phrases, “by the sword, by the famine, by the pestilence” (Jeremiah 24:10; Ezekiel 6:11), of an “execration and an astonishment and a curse and a reproach” (Jeremiah 24:9; Jeremiah 26:6; Jeremiah 29:18). They would involve themselves by rejecting his counsels in all the worst evils that he had prophesied before. What had been addressed to the mixed multitude is emphatically repeated in Jeremiah 42:19 to the “remnant of Judah.”