behold, I will save thee from afar off, and thy seed from the land of their captivity;
JEREMIAH AND LAMENTATIONS
And he explains himself more fully, and says, Into the hand of the king of Babylon, and into the hand of his servants, so that not only Nebuchadnezzar was to be victorious over Egypt, but also his servants, which was still more degrading.
A promise is at length added, not to shew favor to that heathen nation, but that
God might shew that he would be so far merciful towards the Egyptians as not wholly to destroy them. It shall be inhabited, he says, as in ancient days. Ezekiel says that the kingdom would be small and humble or abject. (Ezekiel 29:14, 15.) But our
Prophet seems to promise to Egypt the same prosperity as it had before its overthrow.
We have already said that restoration was promised to the Egyptians, not because
God was pacified towards them, but because his purpose was that his mercy should be made evident in the judgments he executed even on foreign nations; and further, it served to confirm prophecy, when to Egypt, after having been destroyed, was granted that restoration of which Jeremiah had prophesied. The truth, then, of what the Prophet had said became more evident through the two changes, than if he had only said, *``God* shall destroy Egypt.'' We now, then, perceive why the Prophet spoke of the future condition of Egypt. It follows, ---
Jeremiah 46:27
27. But fear not thou, O my servant Jacob, and be not dismayed, O Israel: for, behold, I will save thee from afar off, and thy seed from the land of their captivity; and Jacob shall return, and be in rest and at ease, and none shall make him afraid.
27. Et tu ne timeas, serve mi Jacob, et ne expavescas (vel, frangaris animo,
conteri et frangi, sed magis refertur ad animum metaphorice, ne ergo frangaris animo,) Israel; quia ecce ego servo te a longinquo, et semen tuum e terra captivitatis ipsorum; et revertetur Jacob et quiescet et securus erit, et nemo exterrebit (nemo qui exterreat, ad verbum.)
The Prophet now directs his discourse to the Israelites; for we have already said that he was not appointed a teacher to heathen nations. Whatever, then, he spoke of heathen nations had a reference to the benefit of his people; and for this purpose, as we have said, the Prophets extended their prophecies respecting God's judgments to all nations; for otherwise the Israelites would have been disheartened, as though their condition was worse than that of others: ``What can this mean? God has chosen us as his peculiar people; in the meantime we alone are miserable: God pours forth on us his whole rigor, and yet he spares the unbelieving. It would have been better for us to have been rejected wholly by him, for the covenant which he has made with us only renders us more miserable than others.'' Thus the miserable
Israelites might have rushed headlong into despair, had nothing been done in time to relieve them. And then the Prophets, or rather the Spirit of God who spoke by them, regarded another thing; for if nothing had been predicted they would have passed by, with closed eyes, those judgments which God executed on all their neighbors, for all that Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel had predicted was fulfilled. Had they been silent respecting the ruin of Egypt, of the Philistines and the Moabites, the people, owing to their torpor, would not have considered God's judgments, but would have thought them to have all happened by chance. The Prophets then represented as in a mirror the power of God, that the Israelites might know that it extended to the