It Is Pointed Out That It Is Because Of Their Incredible Behaviour That They Have Undergone, And Are Undergoing, Their Present Distresses (Jeremiah 2:14-19).
It is apparent from the words that follow that at the time when Jeremiah was speaking Judah had already suffered problems from invasions by their enemies, including Egypt. It may well therefore have in mind the period immediately following the death of Josiah when the Egyptians were rampant. And YHWH now brings home to them that these distresses were all due to their having forsaken Him. When He had delivered them from Egypt His intention had been to watch over them and protect them from all their enemies (Jeremiah 2:3 b), because they were His holy people, but by their behaviour they had made that impossible, and that was why, by their own choice, they were now being subjected to their enemies.
YHWH proceeded to ask three questions. The first questioned whether Israel, His firstborn (Exodus 4:22), should really be a servant and a prey to their enemies (Jeremiah 2:14). That had not originally been His intention for them. The second was rhetorical and questioned whether or not they had brought their predicament on themselves by forsaking YHWH (Jeremiah 2:17). And the third was as to why they were looking to Egypt and Assyria for help when they should have been looking to YHWH. The whole emphasis is on what they have lost by not looking to YHWH from the beginning.
“Is Israel a servant? Is he a home-born slave?
Why is he become a prey?”
Israel were the people who had been delivered by YHWH out of the house of bondage. They were His firstborn (Exodus 4:22). He had meant them to be a free people, freely worshipping their God, enjoying His bounty and living under His protection. Why then had they now become a servant, yes, a home-born slave, having no rights and bound to serve others in what should have been their own home? Why indeed had they become a prey to the roaming wild beasts, both human and beastly? (At this time there were still many savage beasts around in wilderness areas quite willing to take possession of land that became unoccupied, just as there were many human enemies only too eager to seize spoil). It was all because they had forsaken the living God, and replaced Him with useless nothings who were helpless to save them.
Others see the question as asking why the one who was YHWH's servant, one, as it were, born in His house (see Genesis 15:3), had now lost YHWH's protection and become a prey. Either way the thought is of honour and distinction lost.
“The young lions have roared on him, and yelled,
And they have made his land waste,
His cities are burned up,
Without inhabitant.”
The children also of Memphis and Tahpanhes,
Have broken the crown of your head.”
That was why the young lions (especially the Egyptians) had roared at them and entered their land, and had made their land waste and burned their cities leaving them deserted. That was why soldiers from Memphis and Tahpanhes (two leading cities in Egypt) had broken the crown of their head. The breaking of the crown of their head may refer to the death of Josiah. Alternatively it may indicate that they had rendered them bald and in mourning, or had acted like a slave-owner with a slave by shaving their heads. In other words, that the Egyptians had cropped Israel's glory. Among the people of Judah a good head of hair was seen as an evidence of well-being and blessing. To be shorn was to be shamed.
It is intended to be ironic that the very people from whom YHWH had originally delivered them (Jeremiah 2:6), were now the ones who could play fast and loose with them. Memphis (Noph) was situated on the Nile about twenty four kilometres (seventeen miles) from the apex of the Delta, in Lower (Northern) Egypt. Tahpanhes (Daphnai) was in the eastern Delta. It was where Jeremiah and the other refugees would later settle (Jeremiah 43:7-9).
“Have you not procured this for yourself,
In that you have forsaken YHWH your God,
When he led you by the way?”
And who was to blame for all this? Had they not brought it on themselves? It was because they had forsaken YHWH as He led them in the way, YHWH Who was THEIR God, but Whom they had put aside. There is a warning in this for all that if we cease walking with Him in His way we too will soon encounter pitfalls.
“And now what have you to do in the way to Egypt,
To drink the waters of the Shihor?
Or what have you to do in the way to Assyria,
To drink the waters of the River?”
He then asks them what they were doing by drinking of the waters of Shihor, in Egypt, or by drinking of the waters of the Euphrates, in Assyria? What had these rivers to do with them? What they should have been doing was drinking of the wellspring of living waters, partaking of YHWH Himself. The reference is to their vacillations between Egypt and Assyria (shortly to be replaced by Babylon), as they looked for their security first to one and then to the other, and always at tremendous cost. These rivers did not come cheap.
Here the reference to Shihor indicates the Nile, as also in Isaiah 23:3, but in Joshua 13:3 it is the border river between Palestine and Egypt. It is a case of the part most familiar to Judah being used to indicate the whole.
“Your own wickedness will correct you,
And your backslidings will reprove you,
Know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and a bitter,
That you have forsaken YHWH your God,
And that my fear is not in you,
The word of the Lord,
YHWH of hosts.”
But they could be sure that they would inevitably learn their lesson from the results of their own wickedness and from their own backslidings. The consequences of them would correct and reprove them. And they would soon learn what an evil and bitter thing it was to have forsaken YHWH their God, and to have ceased to fear Him (worship and obey Him in reverent awe). And this was the sure and certain prophetic word of ‘the Sovereign Lord, YHWH of Hosts'. Here God emphasises just Whom they have forsaken, the One Who could have been their Protector and who could have delivered them, because He was sovereign over all things and God of the hosts of heaven and earth, but Who would now bring judgment on them because He was the Lord of all the hosts of men.
The description YHWH of hosts was regularly used by Isaiah, and once by Micah, is found eighty two times in Jeremiah, a number of times in Samuel and Kings, and regularly in the later prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. It also appears in the Psalms, Nahum and Habakkuk.