Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
He confirms the same destruction of Egypt and of the Jews who had fled there by the Chaldeans, and warns the Jews not to worship the idols and gods of the Egyptians. Secondly, in verse 15, the men and women protest against him and God, asserting that they will worship the queen of heaven in Egypt just as they did in Judea. Hence, thirdly, Jeremiah (verse 24) threatens them all, as well as Pharaoh, with the sword and famine. All these things actually came to pass in the 35th year of Nebuchadnezzar; for at that time he conquered Egypt and became monarch. Hence from that point begins the era of his monarchy, which Daniel uses. For two years after the conquest of Egypt, Nebuchadnezzar saw the golden statue, as I said on Daniel chapter II, verse 1.
Note: This is the last extant prophecy of Jeremiah. For those that follow, in chapter XLV and beyond, were delivered before this time, as is evident from their titles.
Vulgate Text: Jeremiah 44:1-9
1. The word that came through Jeremiah to all the Jews who dwelt in the land of Egypt, dwelling in Migdol, and in Tahpanhes, and in Memphis, and in the land of Pathros, saying: 2. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: You have seen all the evil that I have brought upon Jerusalem and upon all the cities of Judah; and behold, this day they are desolate, and no one dwells in them, 3. because of the wickedness which they committed to provoke Me to anger, in going to burn incense and to serve other gods whom neither they nor you nor your fathers knew. 4. And I sent to you all My servants the prophets, rising early and sending them, saying: Do not do this abominable thing that I hate. 5. But they did not listen, nor did they incline their ear to turn from their wickedness and not burn incense to other gods. 6. So My indignation and My fury were poured out and kindled in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; and they have been turned into desolation and waste, as they are this day. 7. And now thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Why do you commit this great evil against your own souls, so that man and woman, child and infant are cut off from the midst of Judah, and nothing remains to you? 8. By provoking Me with the works of your hands, burning incense to other gods in the land of Egypt where you have gone to dwell, so that you may be cut off and be a curse and a reproach among all the nations of the earth? 9. Have you forgotten the wickedness of your fathers, and the wickedness of the kings of Judah, and the wickedness of their wives, and your own wickedness, and the wickedness of your wives, which they committed in the land of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? 10. They have not been humbled to this day: they have not feared, nor have they walked in the law of the Lord and in My statutes which I set before you and before your fathers. 11. Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I will set My face against you for harm, and I will cut off all Judah. 12. And I will take the remnant of Judah who have set their faces to enter the land of Egypt to dwell there, and they shall all be consumed in the land of Egypt: they shall fall by the sword and by famine, and they shall be consumed, from the least to the greatest; by the sword and by famine they shall die. 13. And they shall become an oath and a wonder and a curse and a reproach. 13. And I will punish those who dwell in the land of Egypt, as I punished Jerusalem, with the sword and famine and pestilence. 14. And none shall escape or survive of the remnant of the Jews who go to sojourn in the land of Egypt and to return to the land of Judah, to which they lift up their souls to return and dwell there; none shall return except those who flee. 15. Then all the men who knew that their wives were sacrificing to other gods, and all the women who stood there in a great multitude, and all the people dwelling in the land of Egypt in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying: 16. As for the word that you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we will not listen to you, 17. but we will certainly do whatever has gone out of our own mouth: we will burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we and our fathers, our kings and our princes did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then we had plenty of food and prospered and saw no evil. 18. But since we stopped burning incense to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and by famine. 19. And when we burned incense to the queen of heaven and poured out drink offerings to her, did we make cakes in her image to worship her and pour out drink offerings to her without our husbands' knowledge? 20. Then Jeremiah spoke to all the people — to the men and to the women and to all the people who had given him that answer — saying: 21. Was it not the incense that you burned in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem, you and your fathers, your kings and your princes, and the people of the land — did not the Lord remember these things, and did they not come into His mind? 22. And the Lord could no longer bear it, because of the evil of your doings and because of the abominations that you committed; and your land has become a desolation and a horror and a curse, without inhabitant, as it is this day. 23. Because you burned incense to idols and sinned against the Lord, and did not obey the voice of the Lord, and did not walk in His law and His statutes and His testimonies: therefore this evil has come upon you, as it is this day. 24. Moreover Jeremiah said to all the people and to all the women: Hear the word of the Lord, all Judah who are in the land of Egypt: 25. Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: You and your wives have spoken with your mouths and fulfilled with your hands, saying: We will surely perform our vows that we have vowed, to burn incense to the queen of heaven and to pour out drink offerings to her. You have fulfilled your vows and carried them out in deed. 26. Therefore hear the word of the Lord, all Judah who dwell in the land of Egypt: Behold, I have sworn by My great name, says the Lord, that My name shall no more be named in the mouth of any man of Judah in all the land of Egypt, saying: As the Lord God lives. 27. Behold, I will watch over them for harm and not for good; and all the men of Judah who are in the land of Egypt shall be consumed by the sword and by famine until they are utterly consumed. 28. And those who escape the sword shall return from the land of Egypt to the land of Judah, few in number; and all the remnant of Judah who have gone to the land of Egypt to sojourn there shall know whose word will stand, Mine or theirs. 29. And this shall be the sign to you, says the Lord, that I will punish you in this place, so that you may know that My words will surely stand against you for harm: 30. Thus says the Lord: Behold, I will deliver Pharaoh Hophra, king of Egypt, into the hand of his enemies and into the hand of those who seek his life, just as I delivered Zedekiah king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, his enemy who sought his life. Rising early — with great vigilance and zeal. See chapter VII, 43. 6. And My indignation was poured out — that is, it was melted and poured forth like a torrent of fire. See chapter XIII, 18. As it is this day — so it appears today. 9. The wickedness of their wives — 'their,' that is, of each one of you. The Hebrews, instead of נשיו nasciau (his wives), read נשיאו nesciau, that is, of his princes. In the streets of Jerusalem. — Note: The ancients divided cities into larger parts or districts, which were called 'regiones' (regions). Thus Rome was from ancient times divided and distributed into various regions (for instance, by Romulus into three — those of the Capitoline, Palatine, and Caelian hills; by Trajan into fourteen, and the same number is still counted today), each of which had, and still has, its own head or prefect, who in Italian is called 'caporione,' meaning the head or captain of the region. His authority and power are great during an interregnum, when the Pope has died; for his duty is to protect his region from tumult, murders, thefts, and every crime; and therefore he has the power of the sword and of life and death.
Verse 10
10. They have not been humbled. — In Hebrew, they have not been broken, crushed, humbled after so many scourges and blows; but like dross in a furnace, so they persist in their obstinacy, just as they persisted in servitude and the furnace of Babylon.
11. I will set My face — henceforth I will look upon you not with a benign countenance, but with a hostile, fierce, and threatening one, aiming punishments and calamities at you; and in that fierce expression and look I will be resolute.
12. They shall become an oath (they shall become a curse) and a wonder — a horror. So the Hebrews explain: so that all who hear of your calamities will be struck with horror.
Verse 14
14. To which they lift up their souls — to which they eagerly aspire, as it were raising themselves and their spirits toward their homeland of Judea, in order to return to it. See chapter XXII, 17.
Except those who flee — from Egypt, following the counsel of Jeremiah and fearing the sword of the Chaldeans hanging over Egypt, as is clear from verse 28; hence in Hebrew it is: except those who escape.
17. But we will certainly do whatever has gone out of our mouth — we will do whatever we wish, whatever pleases us. This is similar to Deuteronomy VIII, 3; Matthew IV, 4; or whatever we have vowed to the queen of heaven, that is, the moon, this we will offer. See the commentary on chapter VII, 18.
And we were filled. — 'And,' that is 'therefore,' we were filled, because namely we worshipped the queen of heaven.
19. Did we do it without our husbands? — meaning: We women imitate our husbands. See chapter VII, 18.
To worship her. — In Hebrew להעציבה lehaatsiba, that is, to fashion an idol in it. Whence it appears that in their cakes they formed or stamped the image of their idol, namely the queen of heaven, that is, the moon, in order to worship her. So Lyranus, Vatablus, Sanchez, and others. Thus the Turks, worshipping the moon, display its image on their standards, tables, and foods. The reason was that the moon influences and governs sublunary things; hence they worshipped it as their queen. Hence the ancient error of the Egyptians and Chaldeans was that fate is determined by the course and disposition of the stars. Hence Horus Apollo, book I of the Hieroglyphics, chapter XIII, says that a star is the hieroglyphic of fate. And Orpheus, in his hymn to the stars, calls them 'fateful indicators of all fates,' whom Juvenal follows, Satire 7, saying:
The star and the wondrous power of hidden fate.
See the commentary on chapter X, verse 2.
Verse 21
21. Was it not the sacrifice (meaning: Do you not remember that the Lord did not forget the sacrifices which you say you offered to idols in Judea, which you know God could not endure, and for that very reason gave Judea to the Chaldeans to be devastated? Note:
It came up into His heart — that is, it provoked His spirit, just as a received injury causes bile to rise in the head of a noble man.
26. I have sworn (I swear) by My great name — that is, by My great name, namely by My immense Majesty; others say, by My proper name, which is Jehovah.
That My name shall no more be named — meaning that I will not permit anyone among the Jews in Egypt to swear by My name, because I will kill them or lead them captive to Babylon, with a few exceptions who will flee to Judea; for they are utterly unworthy to name My holy name with their impure mouths; meaning: I do not wish it to be named by them and polluted. So Lyranus, Hugo, Dionysius, Castrius, and others generally.
Secondly, Sanchez aptly explains: The Jews, he says, did not intend or wish to linger long among the foreign Egyptians; rather their plan was that when the condition of Jewish affairs seemed to improve, they would return to their homeland, where, as their ancestors once did, they would worship the true God and swear legitimately and lawfully by His name according to custom. God therefore denies this and decrees that they will neither return to their homeland nor ever recover the religion which they impiously betrayed, but will be destroyed by the Chaldeans in Egypt. He thus arranges the words of the text as follows, meaning: Never will a Jewish man who is in the whole land of Egypt invoke My name or swear by Me.
29. I will visit — that is, I will punish and destroy.
30. Pharaoh Hophra. — The Chaldean renders: Pharaoh the lame, as if this Pharaoh were the one surnamed Necho, that is, the lame, as Maldonatus thinks. But he seems to be mistaken; for the Hebrews, the Septuagint, and our Translator all have Pharaoh Hophra, not Necho. Moreover, Hophra does not mean weak and lame, as will appear shortly. This Pharaoh, then, was the one surnamed Vaphres, as the Septuagint translates, or Apries, who, according to Herodotus book II, was the son of Psammis the son of Necho — the Necho who killed Josiah king of Judah. Therefore Necho was the grandfather of Hophra, or Apries. Apries began to reign in the 18th year of Nebuchadnezzar, that is, the 10th of Zedekiah; for in the 2nd year of Apries, Jerusalem was captured, as Clement testifies, Stromata book II. Furthermore, this Hophra was the last of the Pharaohs; for Amasis, who succeeded him, is nowhere called Pharaoh, perhaps because he was not an absolute king but a vassal and tributary of Nebuchadnezzar, as Genebrardus and Torniellus suppose.
Herodotus, book II, and Diodorus, book II, relate that this Apries was captured and strangled by Amasis, his successor to the throne, although he had previously been the most fortunate of all men of that age, says Herodotus, and held the conviction that neither man nor god could take his kingdom from him, since it seemed to him to have been established by God.
Hence, alluding to this blasphemy and pride of his, Ezekiel XXIX, 3 says: 'Behold, I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, great dragon, who says: The river is mine, and I made myself. And I will put a hook in your jaws,' etc. Here note that Herodotus and Diodorus err when they relate that Apries was captured by Amasis and handed over to his enemies for strangulation. For it is clear — both from Jeremiah here, and from Ezekiel chapter XXIX, 19, and chapter XXXI, 11, 15, and 18, and from Josephus, Antiquities X, chapter XI, and from St. Jerome on chapter IV of Lamentations — that Apries was captured and killed not by Amasis but by Nebuchadnezzar. It is possible, however, that Nebuchadnezzar substituted Amasis for him in the kingdom, and that therefore Herodotus and Diodorus supposed he was captured and killed by Amasis.
Rabbi David and Rabbi Solomon note that in the Hebrew the name Pharaoh is the same as Hophra, except that in Hophra the letter chet is prefixed. For Pharaoh is written in Hebrew פרעה Pharo, but Hophra is חפרע Chophra; now chet, being a hard letter, softens to 'e' both in the Septuagint and in Latin: hence they translate Chophra as Ephree, just as for the Hebrew pesach they translate phase, for Korah they write Core, and for Terah they write Thare.
God therefore plays on the similarity of words, saying: I will deliver Pharaoh Chophra, I will make him chophra, that is, a pit (for He alludes to the pits and ditches with which Egypt abounds because of the Nile) — stripped bare and despoiled of all goods. It is as if one were to say in Latin: I will make Claudius (the lame) actually lame, Caesar (the cut one) actually cut down, I will slaughter Julius by the jugular. For chophra is composed of חפה chaphar, that is, to dig, and פרע para, that is, to strip bare, to despoil. Others think that chet in Chophra stands for he, which is the last letter in Pharaoh, and that chophra is a passive participle of the Hophal conjugation, meaning: he has been stripped, weakened, made lame — meaning: I will cause Pharaoh, according to his name, to become Chophra, that is, naked, weak, and lame. But the former explanation is more elegant and more true.
St. Epiphanius writes in his Life of Jeremiah that he prophesied in Egypt and displayed a sign to the priests of Egypt, saying that all their images must fall, and likewise all things made by hands (namely idols, their temples, and their altars), when the Virgin Mother would come to Egypt with her infant. Isaiah also predicted this in chapter XIX, 1, as St. Jerome and Procopius explain in that place, St. Chrysostom on Matthew II; Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word; Eusebius, Demonstration VI, chapter XX; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechesis X; Origen, Homily 3 on Various Subjects; Palladius in the Lausiac History, chapter LII in the Life of Apollo; Rabanus on Ecclesiastes chapter XXIV; Anselm, Lyranus, Abulensis, and others.
Finally, on account of this prophecy, Epiphanius, Dorotheus, Torniellus, and others relate that Jeremiah was stoned shortly afterwards by the Jews in Tahpanhes and died a martyr. Epiphanius adds that the Egyptians attached so much importance to this prophecy of Jeremiah that they introduced the solemn custom of placing a virgin in a bed and an infant in a manger everywhere, and worshipping them together; and when asked by a certain king what this rite meant, they replied that it was a mystery that their ancestors had received long ago as a tradition from the holy Prophet. The Alexandrian Chronicle records the same.
Learn here how harmful it is not to heed the sound counsel of the prudent and the just. The king and the leaders refused to heed the counsel of Jeremiah; hence the leaders, the king, and the kingdom perished.
Rehoboam, because he preferred the foolish counsel of the young men to the wise advice of the elders, was therefore deprived of the greater part of the kingdom, 3 Kings XII.
Clotaire, king of the Franks, permitted his pious wife Radegund to build herself a monastery at Poitiers. Certain evil counselors persuaded the king to take back the queen. She sensed the danger and wrote to St. Germanus, Bishop of Paris, to dissuade the king from this intention. He did so and swayed the king, so that he asked pardon of both the queen and the Bishop and blamed his efforts on the evil counselors. Divine vengeance pursued them: for just as Arius, attacking the Catholic faith, poured out all his intestines into a sewer, so also the same befell those who persecuted the holy queen, as her Life records.
In the year of our Lord 723, a certain Jewish impostor at Tiberias persuaded the ruler Yazid to destroy the sacred images; if he did so, the impostor said, he would live comfortably and reign happily for thirty years. The ruler acquiesced and decreed iconoclasm: but he did not live beyond a year and a half and descended into eternal fire; and after his death the images were restored to their places. His son, named al-Walid, enraged at the Jew as the murderer of his father, forced him to die a most shameful death. Thus he received the reward of his impious counsel, as John Damascene reports in his book On Images.
Wittiza, king of Spain, impure and impious, fearing that his subjects would rise against him on account of his tyranny, followed the evil counsel of a certain man and ordered the walls of the cities and the fortifications of the kingdom to be demolished under the pretense of peace. But it turned out badly for him: for he was deprived of his kingdom and his eyes, died wretchedly, and left a weakened kingdom to his successor Roderic, so that it was easy for the Moors to subjugate it. So says Rodrigo, Archbishop of Toledo, book V, chapter XVI, and Mariana, book VI, chapter XIX.
Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, having criminally seized the Duchy from his nephew Gian Galeazzo, and fearing Alfonso king of Naples, incited Charles VIII, king of France, against him, who came and stripped Alfonso of his kingdom. Ludovico, then fearing the power of the French and repenting of what he had done, conspired against the king together with the princes of Italy; but he was defeated and captured by the French, confined in an iron cage, and died most wretchedly. So Guicciardini, books III and IV of the History of Italy, and Giovio, book IV of the Eulogies of Military Men.