THE Philistines, perpetual enemies of Israel, are next singled out for an announcement of overwhelming disaster. Chapter 47 is a fresh example of the divinely chosen order in the book of Jeremiah, for what is here recorded bongs, in time of utterance, to a period early in the prophet’s service for God. It is given thus late in the book that all the judgments may be stated in a single group, beginning with Judah, and in turn including each of her neighbors and finally Babylon itself, the first Gentile empire to which all the others were subjected.
Pharaoh was to strike Gaza (during the campaign which took the Egyptian army to Carchemish on the Euphrates — 2 Chronicles 35:20), but a far worse affliction would follow, coming from the north; this was the conquering host of Babylon headed by Nebuchadnezzar. The figure of an irresistible flood of water is used to portray that invasion which would result in the ruin of Philistia and largely the Mediterranean coast, for Tyre, and Sidon in the north, far outside of the region occupied by the Philistines, were to be cut off from every helper that remained. In this destruction of the Philistines, Nebuchadnezzar would only be a weapon in the hands of God, as the latter part of chapter 47 shows.
Caphtor, the land from which the Philistines came, is believed to have been a part of Egypt (see Genesis 10:13, 14). Gaza and Ashkelon were two of the five principal cities of the Philistines. Isaiah 14:29-32, Ezekiel 25:15-17, Amos 1:6-8, Zechariah 2:4-7, and Zechariah 9:5-7 are other prophecies dealing with the Philistines; all of them have not yet been fully accomplished, although the Philistines as a people have disappeared. They will reappear in the last days when Israel again becomes the center of God’s dealings with the earth.
Chapter 48 is occupied with the crushing blow to fall upon Moab through the king of Babylon. Jeremiah, in the beginning of Jehoiakim’s reign, twenty-one or twenty-two years before Jerusalem’s destruction, had sent to the kings of Moab, Edom, the Ammonites, Tyre and Sidon, a message from God calling upon them to submit to Nebuchadnezzar. Those nations that would not serve him were to be severely punished (Jeremiah 27:1-11). It is plain that the message was ignored by all of them; need we wonder at it, when Judah’s last king also treated with contempt every word that Jeremiah brought him from God? In these chapters, we are reading of what befell those who refused God’s mercy.
No less than 27 places are named in this chapter (48), and among them are several north of the river Amon which had separated Moab from the tribe of Reuben. When the Reubenites were smitten by Hazael, king of Syria (2 Kings 10:32, 33), and later by Tiglath-Pileser, king of Assyria (1 Chronicles 5:26), the Moabites must have repossessed their land, which had been Moab’s until shortly bore the children of Israel crossed the wilderness from Egypt on their way to Canaan.
“Madmen” (verse 2) is not a term of reproach here, but the name of one of the many small towns in Moab. Chemosh (verse 7) was the principal god of the Moabites and Ammonites. In verse 12 read, “pourers that shall pour him off”, instead of “wanderers that shall cause him to wander”; the reference is to verse 11. The house of Israel’s being ashamed of Bethel relates to Jeroboam’s placing there one of his golden calves, and an idolatrous altar (1 Kings 12:28-33; see also Genesis 35:1, 7).
Verse 34: “An heifer of three years old” is believed to lie the name of a town, Eglath-shelishijan, rather than a reference to an animal.
The land of Moab was to become a desolation, and this, travelers tell us, is its present condition. (Other Scriptures telling of God’s dealings with Moab are Psalm 83, Isaiah 11:14, Isaiah 15 and 16, Isaiah 25:10-12; Zephaniah 2:8-11, Daniel 11:41, Amos 2:1). As said of the Philistines, all the prophecies concerning Moab are not fulfilled; they await the day to come when the Jews shall be undergoing the fearful experiences of the time of Jacob’s trouble in their land, from which deliverance will come by the Lord’s appearing. Jeremiah, however, except in verse 47, deals only with the time then imminent, when Nebuchadnezzar was to be the instrument of God for Moab’s punishment.
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