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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Jeremiah 47:5 - 47:5
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The prophet sees, in the spirit, the threatened desolation as already come upon Philistia, and portrays it in its effects upon the people and the country. "Baldness (a sign of the deepest and most painful sorrow) has come upon Gaza;" cf. Mic 1:16. נִדְמְתָה is rendered by the Vulgate conticuit. After this Graf and Nägelsbach take the meaning of being "speechless through pain and sorrow;" cf. Lam 2:10. Others translate "to be destroyed." Both renderings are lexically permissible, for דָּמָה and דָּמַם have both meanings. In support of the first, the parallelism of the members has been adduced; but this is not decisive, for figurative and literal representations are often interchanged. On the whole, it is impossible to reach any definite conclusion; for both renderings give suitable ideas, and these not fundamentally different in reality the one from the other. שְׁאֵרִית עִמְקָם, "the rest of their valley" (the suffix referring to Gaza and Ashkelon), is the low country round about Gaza and Ashkelon, which are specially mentioned from their being the two chief fortresses of Philistia. עֵמֶק is suitably applied to the low-lying belt of the country, elsewhere called שְׁפְלָה, "the low country," as distinguished from the hill-country; for עֵמֶק does not always denote a deep valley, but is also sometimes used, as in Jos 17:16, etc., of the plain of Jezreel, and of other plains which are far from being deeply-sunk valleys. Thus there is no valid reason for following the arbitrary translation of the lxx, καὶ τὰ κατάλοιπα ̓Ενακείμ, and changing עִמְקָם into עֲנָקִים, as Hitzig and Graf do; more especially is it utterly improbable that in the Chaldean period Anakim were still to be found in Philistia. The mention of them, moreover, is out of place here; and still less can we follow Graf in his belief that the inhabitants of Gath are the "rest of the Anakim." In the last clause of Jer 47:5, Philistia is set forth as a woman, who tears her body (with her nails) in despair, makes incisions on her body; cf. Jer 16:6; Jer 41:5. The question, "How long dost thou tear thyself?" forms a transition to the plaintive request, "Gather thyself," i.e., draw thyself back into thy scabbard. But the seer replies, "How can it rest? for Jahveh hath given it a commission against Ashkelon and the Philistine sea-coast." For תִּשְׁקֹטִי, in Jer 47:7, we must read the 3rd pers. fem. תִּשְׁקֹט, as the following לָהּ shows. The form probably got into the text from an oversight, through looking at תִּשְׁקֹטִי in Jer 47:6. חֹוף, "the sea-coast," a designation of Philistia, as in Eze 25:16.
The prophecy concludes without a glance at the Messianic future. The threatened destruction of the Philistines has actually begun with the conquest of Philistia by Nebuchadnezzar, but has not yet culminated in the extermination of the people. The extermination and complete extirpation are thus not merely repeated by Ezek; Eze 25:15., but after the exile the threats are once more repeated against the Philistines by Zechariah (Zec 9:5): they only reached their complete fulfilment when, as Zechariah announces, in the addition made to Isa 14:30., their idolatry also was removed from them, and their incorporation into the Church of God was accomplished through judgment. Cf. the remarks on Zep 2:10.