Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I will give Pharaoh-hophra king of Egypt into the hand of his enemies, and into the hand of them that seek his life; as I gave Zedekiah king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, his enemy, and that sought his life.
Hophra - in Herodotus called Apries. He succeeded Psammis, the successor of Pharaoh-necho, who was beaten by Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish on the Euphrates. Amasis rebelled against and overcame him in the city Sais.
I will give Pharaoh ... into the hand of ... them that seek his life. Herodotus, in curious accordance with this, records that Amasis, after treating Hophra well at first, was instigated, by persons who thought they could not be safe unless he were put to death, to strangle him. "His enemies" refer to Amasis, etc.; the words are accurately chosen, so as not to refer to Nehuchadnezzar, who is not mentioned until the end of the verse, and in connection, with Zedekiah (Ezekiel 29:3; Ezekiel 30:21). Amasis' civil war with Hophra pioneered the way for Nebuchadnezza's invasion in the twenty-third of his reign (Josephus, 'Antiquities,' 10: 11).
Remarks:
(1) The sore chastisements of God are insufficient to bring men to repentance unless the Spirit of God sanctify those chastisements to the spiritual good of the sufferers. After all God's so wonderfully condescending entreaties to His people (Jeremiah 44:4, "Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate"), the Jews had persisted in idolatry, and so had brought a fearful ruin on their chief city and their country (Jeremiah 44:6). Yet the Jews who were left in Judea, after this terrible warning, were as bent on idolatry and rebellion as ever.
(2) God plainly told them that it was "against their own souls" they were committing this great evil (Jeremiah 44:7); and asked them had they forgotten the awful consequences of their past quilt, that they still would not "humble themselves," nor "fear" God, and have respect unto His laws? (Jeremiah 44:9-10.) God declared therefore, that as He had not spared even the holy city Jerusalem, much less would He spare them in Egypt, which he abhorred for its idolatry. They had gone there in direct and self-willed defiance of His command; and, moreover, when there, had added to their guilt by abominable idolatries, practiced in order to ingratiate themselves with the corrupt Egyptians. The result, therefore, should be the very reverse of their calculations. They had gone to Egypt under the notion that a return from thence to their country would be easily accomplished (Jeremiah 44:14); whereas their brethren in Babylon, they supposed, would never return from such a distance; but it was the Jews in Babylon, who had been sent there by God, that were weaned from idolatry and then restored, while the Jews who had gone by their own perverse will into Egypt were there confirmed in the worst idolatry, and therefore perished there. When we rush into temptation without the warrant of God, God, in righteous retribution, leaves us to eat of the bitter fruit of our own way.
(3) It is and when those who should help one another forward toward heaven, husband and wife, fathers and children, kings and their subjects, confirm each other in rebellion against God, and so ripen each other for hell (Jeremiah 44:15; Jeremiah 44:17). The family relation is especially powerful either for good or evil (Jeremiah 44:19). It is most important, therefore, that the children of God, in entering the married state, as, indeed, every intimate connection of life, should choose as their partners, not those who will be a snare and stumblingblock to them spiritually, but such as will help them forward in the narrow way, seeking, like themselves, the glory of God as the end of life, not earthly vanities.
(4) Thousands, like the Jews, in Egypt, sacrifice their souls for the sake of "plenty of victuals" (Jeremiah 44:17). They fancy that they can secure worldly prosperity by following their own carnal wills and imaginations, without making the favour of God their aim; and that, if they were to make the will of God their rule of life, they should be in want of earthly goods (Jeremiah 44:18). But is this so? Far from it. God cannot break His promise, that if we seek the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, first, all these earthly things shall be added to us over and above (Matthew 6:34). On the other hand, the Jews who thus falsely reasoned forgot the awful consequences which befell their nation by not having served the Lord, their land having been made "a desolation, an astonishment, and a curse without an inhabitant" (Jeremiah 44:21-22). Let us not be forgetful of God's past judgments, like them; nor let us make earthly prosperity or adversity the gauge by which we measure everything, seeing that the godly often have trials which prove to be real blessings; and the ungodly often have for a time prosperity which ends in their ruin (Proverbs 1:32); and "what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul; or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matthew 16:26.)
(5) Men are very punctilious in observing their own code of honour, who utterly set at nought God's code of laws, and the honour of His Majesty. The Jews piqued themselves on their faithfulness to their vows to idols; b ut had they viewed the matter aright, they would have seen that faithfulness to God required that they should not, in the first instance, have vowed to idols at all; and next, when they had perpetrated this sin, that they should not add to it by keeping such abominable and unholy vows (Jeremiah 44:17; Jeremiah 44:25). What would have been an imperative duty in the case of God-namely, to keep a vow-is an additional sin in the case of an idol.
(6) But as men have their code of honour, so has God His. He, too, makes a vow by His own great name (Jeremiah 44:26), which He will fulfill to the letter; those who will not hearken to His words of gracious invitation shall hear His terrible oath of denunciation. Then shall it be known whose words shall stand, God's or the sinners (Jeremiah 44:28). The transgressors, who promise themselves good in earthly vanities after having turned their backs on God, shall be given up to their own fatal, perversity. They shall no more pollute God's holy name with their gifts and with their idols (Jeremiah 44:26; Ezekiel 20:39). They and their earthly stays, such as Pharaoh was to the Jews (Jeremiah 44:29-30), shall perish together. The goods which they promised themselves from idols (Jeremiah 44:17, shall prove to be a self-delusion (Jeremiah 44:28 end); while God, who watches over His people continually for their good, shall watch over the outcast rebels continually for evil (Jeremiah 44:27). Let us Christians also be warned by the voice of God (1 John 5:21, "Little children, keep yourselves from idols"): "Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth ... and covetousness, which is idolatry" (Colossians 3:5).