Jeremiah 43:1-7
1Jeremiah finished telling all the people all these things the Lord their God had sent him to tell them. ▼▼tn This sentence contains an emphasis that is impossible to translate into idiomatic English without sounding redundant. In Hebrew the sentence reads, “When Jeremiah finished [the temporal subordination is left out here because it would make the sentence too long] telling all the people all the words [or all the things] that the Lord their God had sent him [to say] to them, namely all these words,…” The last phrase has been left out of the translation as already having been included. Though it has been left out of the translation, attention is called to its presence here.
2Then Azariah ▼ son of Hoshaiah, Johanan son of Kareah, and other arrogant men said to Jeremiah, “You are telling a lie! The Lord our God did not send you to tell us, ‘You must not go to Egypt and settle there.’ 3But Baruch son of Neriah is stirring you up against us. ▼▼tn Or “is inciting you against us.”
He wants to hand us over to ▼▼tn Heb “in order to give us into the hands of the Chaldeans.” The substitution “he wants to” as the equivalent of the purpose clause has been chosen to shorten the sentence to better conform with contemporary English style.
the Babylonians ▼ so that they will kill us or carry us off into exile in Babylon.” 4So Johanan son of Kareah, all the army officers, and all the rest of the people did not obey the Lord’s command to stay in the land of Judah. 5Instead Johanan son of Kareah and all the army officers led off all the Judean remnant who had come back to live in the land of Judah from all the nations where they had been scattered. ▼▼sn These are the people who are referred to in Jer 40:11-12.
6They also led off all the men, women, children, and royal princesses ▼ that Nebuzaradan, the captain of the royal guard, had left with Gedaliah, ▼ the son of Ahikam and grandson of Shaphan; this included the prophet Jeremiah and Baruch son of Neriah. 7They went on to Egypt ▼▼sn This had been their intention all along (41:17). Though they consulted the Lord and promised to do what he told them, whether they agreed with it or not (42:5-6), it is clear that they had no intention of doing so. Jeremiah could see that (42:19-22). They refused to believe that the Lord had really said what Jeremiah told them (43:4) and feared reprisal from the Babylonians more than any potential destruction from the Lord (43:3).
because they refused to obey the Lord, and came to Tahpanhes. ▼▼sn Tahpanhes was an important fortress city on the northern border of Egypt in the northeastern Nile delta. It is generally equated with the Greek city of Daphne. It has already been mentioned in 2:16 in conjunction with Memphis (the Hebrew name is “Noph”) as a source of soldiers who did violence to the Israelites in the past.
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