Jeremiah Chapter 46 verse 9 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerse 9. - A call to the army, particularizing its two grand divisions, viz. the warriors in chariots, and the light and heavy armed infantry. M. Piorret, of the Egyptian Museum at the Louvre, writes thus: "The army was composed (1) of infantry equipped with a cuirass, a buckler, a pike or an axe, and a sword; they manoeuvred to the sound of the drum and the trumpet; (2) of light troops (archers, slingers, and other soldiers carrying the axe or the tomahawk); (3) warriors in chariots. Cavalry, properly so called, was not employed ... The Egyptians also enlisted auxiliaries, such as Mashawash, a tribe of Libyans, who, after the defeat of a confederation of northern peoples hostile to Menephtah, into which they had entered, refused to leave Egypt, and entered the Egyptian army; the Kahakas, another Libyan tribe; the Shardanas (Sardinians); the Madjaiu, who, after having been in war with the Egyptians under the twelfth dynasty, enrolled themselves under the standard of their conquerors, and constituted a sort of gendarmerie," etc. ('Dictionnaire d'Archdologie Egyptienne,' pp. 64, 65). Among the mercenaries mentioned by Jeremiah, the Ludim deserve special mention. They are generally supposed to be a North African people (and so Ezekiel 30:5). Professor Sayce, however, thinks they may be the Lydian soldiers by whose help Psammetichus made Egypt independent of Assyria, and his successors maintained their power (Cheyne's 'Prophecies of Isaiah,' 2:287). Come up, ye horses; rather, bound (or, prance), ye horses. The verb is literally go up, and seems to be used in the same sense, only in the Hiphil or causative conjugation, in Nahum 3:3 (which should begin, "Horsemen making (their horses) to rear"). Ewald and others render, "Mount the horses," the phrase being substantially the same as in ver. 4 (see above). But the parallelism here is opposed to this; and the prophet has evidently been a reader of the prophecy of Nahum, as the very next clause shows. Rage, ye chariots; rather, rush madly, ye chariots (alluding to Nahum 2:5). The Ethioplans; Hebrew, Cush; often mentioned in connection with Egypt. The whole Nile valley, as far as Abyssinia, had been reduced to an Egyptian province. At last Cush had its turn of revenge, and an Ethiopian dynasty reigned in the palaces of Thebes (s.c. 725-665). The Libyans; Hebrew, Put (which occurs in combination with Lud, as here with Ludim, in Ezekiel 27:10; Ezekiel 30:5). This appears to be the Egyptian Put (nasalized into Punt), i.e. the Somali country on the east coast of Africa, opposite to Arabia (Brugsch).

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(9) The Ethiopians and the Libyans.--In the Hebrew, Cush and Put. The verse describes the prominent elements in the composition of the Egyptian army. The "chariots and horses" had long been proverbial (1Kings 10:28-29; 2Chronicles 1:16; Exodus 15:19). The Cushites were the Ethiopians of the Upper Valley of the Nile, sometimes, as under Zerah (2Chronicles 14:9) and Tirhakah (2Kings 19:9), asserting their independence, but at this time subject to Necho. The name Phut meets us, with Cush and Mizraim, in the list of the sons of Ham in Genesis 10:6; and presumably, therefore, belongs to an African people. Wherever it is mentioned by the prophets it is as an ally or tributary of Egypt (Nahum 3:9; Ezekiel 27:10; Ezekiel 30:5; Ezekiel 38:5). The LXX. version renders it by Libyan, and is followed by the Vulgate and the English. In Nahum 3:9, however, Phut is distinguished from the Libyans (= Lubim); and the LXX. has but one word for both. The word PET is found on Egyptian inscriptions, both as meaning a "bow"and as the name of a people, and this may correspond to the Put of the Hebrew text. The Lydians, or Ludim, are named in the list of Hamite nations as descended from Mizraim (Genesis 10:13); the name is joined with Phut in Ezekiel 27:10, with Cush and Phut in Ezekiel 30:4-5. This would seem to point to an African rather than an Asiatic people like the Lydians. On the other hand, we learn from Herodotus (ii. 153) that, some thirty or forty years before the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Psammetichus I. had settled a large colony of Ionian and Carian emigrants on both banks of the Nile, between Bubastis and the Pelusiac mouth of that river, and that Amasis afterwards formed them into a bodyguard at Memphis. It is obvious that the fame of the monarchy which had its capital at Sardis might easily lead to these Greeks being classed as Lydians, and that thus the name (without entering into its earlier ethnological significance) would acquire a new prominence at the time when the prophets wrote in connexion with Egypt. . . .