Jeremiah 25:20

And all the mingled people, and all the kings of the land of Uz, and all the kings of the land of the Philistines, and Ashkelon, and Azzah, and Ekron, and the remnant of Ashdod,

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(20) All the mingled people.—The word is all but identical with that used in Exodus 12:38 of the “mixed multitude” that accompanied the Israelites from Egypt, and in Nehemiah 13:3 of the alien population of Jerusalem. It occurs again in Jeremiah 25:24, Jeremiah 50:37, and Ezekiel 30:5, and is applied to the tribes of mixed races who were, in various degrees tributary to the state in connection with which they are named. Here the word probably refers to the Ionians or Carians whom Psammitichus, the father of Nechoh, had settled at Bubastis, and who served in his army as auxiliaries. (Herod. ii. 152, 154.)

Uz.—A district of Edom, famous as the scene of the great drama of the book of Job. It is commonly identified with the Arabia Deserta of classical geography. (See Notes on Job 1:1; Genesis 10:23.)

The land of the Philistines.—The four cities that follow belong to the same region. “Azzah” is the same as Gaza, the translators of the Authorised Version having in this instance, and in Deuteronomy 2:23; 1Kings 4:24, adopted this instead of the more familiar form of the LXX. and Vulgate. “Gath,” which appears in the older lists of the five lords of the Philistines (1Samuel 5:8; 1Samuel 6:17; 1Samuel 7:14), has disappeared, having possibly seceded from the confederacy. The “remnant of Ashdod” (the Greek Azotus) is a phrase characteristic of the prophet’s time, the Egyptian king Psammitichus having captured it, after a siege of twenty-nine years, in B.C. 630. (Herod. ii. 157.)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

25:15-29 The evil and the good events of life are often represented in Scripture as cups. Under this figure is represented the desolation then coming upon that part of the world, of which Nebuchadnezzar, who had just began to reign and act, was to be the instrument; but this destroying sword would come from the hand of God. The desolations the sword should make in all these kingdoms, are represented by the consequences of excessive drinking. This may make us loathe the sin of drunkenness, that the consequences of it are used to set forth such a woful condition. Drunkenness deprives men of the use of their reason, makes men as mad. It takes from them the valuable blessing, health; and is a sin which is its own punishment. This may also make us dread the judgments of war. It soon fills a nation with confusion. They will refuse to take the cup at thy hand. They will not believe Jeremiah; but he must tell them it is the word of the Lord of hosts, and it is in vain for them to struggle against Almighty power. And if God's judgments begin with backsliding professors, let not the wicked expect to escape.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The mingled people - Either auxiliaries; or, rather, a constituent portion of the people of Egypt, who were not of pure blood.

Azzah - i. e., Gaza.

The remnant of Ashdod - A sentence which none but a contemporary writer could have used. Psammetichus, after a siege of 29 years, had captured and destroyed Ashdod, except for a feeble remnant.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

20. mingled people—mercenary foreign troops serving under Pharaoh-hophra in the time of Jeremiah. The employment of these foreigners provoked the native Egyptians to overthrow him. Psammetichus, father of Pharaoh-necho, also had given a settlement in Egypt to Ionian and Carian adventurers [Herodotus, 2.152, 154]. (Compare Jer 50:37; see on [926]Isa 19:2, 3; Isa 20:1; Eze 30:5. The term is first found in Ex 12:38.

Uz—in the geographical order here, between Egypt and the states along the Mediterranean; therefore not the "Uz" of Job 1:1 (north of Arabia-Deserta), but the northern part of Arabia-Petræa, between the sea and Idumea (La 4:21; see Ge 36:20, 28).

remnant of Ashdod—called a "remnant," because Ashdod had lost most of its inhabitants in the twenty-nine years siege by Psammetichus. Compare also see on [927]Isa 20:1. Gath is not mentioned because it was overthrown in the same war.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

It is of no great moment to determine whether God by

the mingled people, here mentioned, intended the various nations afterwards particularly expressed by their names, or some people that were not native Egyptians, but lived mingled with them, or some other people of several nations who lived near Judea or the Arabians.

By the kings of the land of Uz, it is most probably judged are to be understood those kings who ruled over that people, who descended from Dishan, Genesis 36:28, and are judged to have inhabited some part of Arabia Petraea, near to Idumea. The cities of the Philistines are reckoned afterward.

Azzah, Ekron, Ashdod, and Ashkelon were four of them; the fifth, which was Gath, is not here named. See 1 Samuel 6:17. It had a king in former times, to whom David fled, 1 Samuel 21:10; but before this time it was destroyed, either by Psammeticus, father to Pharaoh-nechoh, or by Tartan, captain-general to Sargon king of Assyria, of whom read Isaiah 20:1, that he took Ashdod, which may be the reason that here mention is made of no more than

the remnant of Ashdod.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And all the mingled people,.... Not the Arabians, who are mentioned afterwards, Jeremiah 25:24; but rather a mixed people in the land of Egypt, such as came out of it along with the Israelites; or were near it, and bordered upon it, as the Targum; which renders it, all the bordering kings; or rather a mixture of people of different nations that dwelt by the sea coasts, either the Mediterranean, or the Red sea, as others think:

and all the kings of the land of Uz; not the country of Job, called by the Greeks Ausitis, as the Vulgate Latin version; but rather a country of Idumea, so called from Uz the son of Dishan, the son of Seir, Lamentations 4:21;

and all the kings of the land of the Philistines; the petty kings of it, called the lords of the Philistines elsewhere, who were great enemies to the people of the Jews: the prophecy of their destruction is in forty seventh chapter, and whose principal cities are next mentioned:

and Ashkelon, and Azzah, and Ekron, and the remnant of Ashdod; of Ashkelon, and the sword in it, and ruin, see Jeremiah 47:5. "Azzah" is the same with Gaza, whose destruction is also foretold in Jeremiah 47:1; see Acts 8:26; "Ekron" was another of the cities of the Philistines; see 1 Samuel 5:10; and "Ashdod" is the same with Azotus, another of their cities, Acts 8:40; called "the remnant of Ashdod", because the remains only of a once very strong and fortified place; but was so weakened and wasted by Psammiticus, king of Egypt, in a blockade of it, for the space of nine and twenty years (k), before he took it, that when he had got in it, it was but as the carcass of a city, to what it was before (l).

(k) Herodot. l. 2. c. 157. (l) Vid. Prideaux, Connexion, part 1. B. 1. p. 34.

Geneva Study Bible

And all the mixed people, and all the kings of the land {o} of Uz, and all the kings of the land of the Philistines, and {p} Ashkelon, and Azzah, and Ekron, and the remnant of Ashdod,

(o) Read Job 1:1.

(p) Which were cities of the Philistines.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

20. and all the mingled people] here denoting foreigners living in Egypt. This phrase (and so in Jeremiah 25:24) means those who sojourned in a country for commercial or other purposes without losing their own nationality. Cp. Jeremiah 50:37 (referring to foreigners living in Babylon); Exodus 12:38; 1 Kings 10:15; Ezekiel 30:5; Nehemiah 13:3.

and all the kings of the land of Uz] very possibly a gloss (omitted by LXX). Uz was an Aramaean tribe, apparently E. or N.E. of Edom. Cp. Lamentations 4:21; Job 1:1. Co. suggests that it may have been familiarity with the latter passage that induced a copyist to insert the clause here, as naming a place better known than some of the others. For other mentions of Uz see Genesis 10:23; Genesis 22:21; Genesis 34:28.

the remnant of Ashdod] It was captured after twenty-nine years’ siege by the Egyptian king Psammetichus (who reigned b.c. 666–610). See Rawlinson, Herod. II. 157. The expression “remnant” therefore has its significance.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 20. - The mingled people; Septuagint, καὶ πάντας τοὺς συμμίκτους: Vulgate, et universes generaliter. The Hebrew 'erebh probably means, not "mingled [i.e. 'motley'] people," as the Authorized Version, but "foreign people," i.e. a body of men belonging to some particular nation intermixed or interspersed among those belonging to another. This explanation will account for the use of the word in all the passages in which it occurs (here and in ver. 24; also Exodus 12:38; Nehemiah 13:3; 1 Kings 10:15; Jeremiah 1:37; Ezekiel 30:5; and perhaps 2 Chronicles 9:14). The context here and in 1 Kings 10:15 seems to imply that the name was given especially to the tribes (probably Bedawin tribes) on the frontier of Judah towards the desert, though in Ezekiel 30:5 it is evidently applied to a people which in some sense belonged to Egypt. In Exodus 12:38 it may be doubted whether the phrase is used from the point of view of Egypt or of the Israelites; in Jeremiah 50:37 it is used of the foreigners in Babylon in 2 Chronicles 9:14 the Massoretic critics have pointed the consonants of the text wrongly ('arabh, Arabia, instead of 'erebh), but without injury to the sense; the Vulgate and Syriac have done the same in 1 Kings 10:15. The notion that the word means ' auxiliary troops" arises (as Thenius on 1 Kings 10:15 remarks) from the free rendering of the Targum at 1 Kings 10:15 and Jeremiah 50:37. Uz. The land associated with the name of Job, and probably east or south-east of Palestine, and adjacent to the Edomites of Mount Seir (Lamentations 4:21). Of the Philistines. Observe, Gath is alone omitted of the five Philistine towns (Joshua 13:3; 1 Samuel 6:17). It had been reduced to complete insignificance (Amos 6:2), through Uzziah's having "broken down" its walls (2 Chronicles 26:6), and is equally passed over in Amos (Amos 1:6-8), Zephaniah (Zephaniah 2:4), and Zechariah (Zechariah 9:5, 6). Azzah; i.e. Gaza, the Septuagint form (the G representing the initial ayin), which is everywhere else adopted by the Authorized Version. The remnant of Ashdod. A significant phrase, which can be explained from Herodotus (2:157): For twenty-nine years Psamnutichus "pressed the siege of Azotus without intermission." We can imagine that he would not be disposed to lenient dealings with the town upon its capture. (An earlier and shorter siege of Ashdod is mentioned in Isaiah 20.) Jeremiah 25:20

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The enumeration of the heathen nations begins with Egypt and goes northwards, the peoples dwelling to the east and west of Judah being ranged alongside one another. First we have in Jeremiah 25:20 the races of Arabia and Philistia that bordered on Egypt to the east and west; and then in Jeremiah 25:21 the Edomites, Moabites, and Ammonites to the east, and, Jeremiah 25:22, the Phoenicians with their colonies to the west. Next we have the Arabian tribes of the desert extending eastwards from Palestine to the Euphrates (Jeremiah 25:23, Jeremiah 25:24); then the Elamites and Medes in the distant east (Jeremiah 25:25), the near and distant kings of the north, and all kingdoms upon earth; last of all the king of Babylon (Jeremiah 25:26). כּל־הערב, lxx: πάντας τοῦς συμμίκτους, and Jerome: cunctusque qui non est Aegyptius, sed in ejus regionibus commoratur. The word means originally a mixed multitude of different races that attach themselves to one people and dwell as strangers amongst them; cf. Exodus 12:38 and Nehemiah 13:3. Here it is races that in part dwelt on the borders of Egypt and were in subjection to that people. It is rendered accordingly "vassals" by Ew.; an interpretation that suits the present verse very well, but will not do in Jeremiah 25:24. It is certainly too narrow a view, to confine the reference of the word to the mercenaries or Ionian and Carian troops by whose help Necho's father Psammetichus acquired sole supremacy (Graf), although this be the reference of the same word in Ezekiel 30:5. The land of Uz is, acc. to the present passage and to Lamentations 4:21, where the daughter of Edom dwells in the land of Uz, to be sought for in the neighbourhood of Idumaea and the Egyptian border. To delete the words "and all the kings of the land of Uz" as a gloss, with Hitz. and Gr., because they are not in the lxx, is an exercise of critical violence. The lxx omitted them for the same reason as that on which Hitz. still lays stress - namely, that they manifestly do not belong to this place, but to Jeremiah 25:23. And this argument is based on the idea that the land of Uz ( ̓Αυσῖτις) lies much farther to the north in Arabia Deserta, in the Hauran or the region of Damascus, or that it is a collective name for the whole northern region of Arabia Deserta that stretches from Idumaea as far as Syria; see Del. on Job 1:1, and Wetzstein in Del.'s Job, S. 536f. This is an assumption for which valid proofs are not before us. The late oriental legends as to Job's native country do not suffice for this. The kings of the land of the Philistines are the kings of the four towns next in order mentioned, with their territories, cf. Joshua 13:3; 1 Samuel 6:4. The fifth of the towns of the lords of the Philistines, Gath, is omitted here as it was before this, in Amos 1:7. and Zephaniah 2:4, and later in Zechariah 9:5, not because Gath had already fallen into premature decay; for in Amos' time Gath was still a very important city. It is rather, apparently, because Gath had ceased to be the capital of a separate kingdom or principality. There is remaining now only a remnant of Ashdod; for after a twenty-nine years' siege, this town was taken by Psammetichus and destroyed (Herod. ii. 157), so that thus the whole territory great lost its importance. Jeremiah 25:21. On Edom, Moab, and the Ammonites, cf. Jeremiah 49:7-22; Jeremiah 48:1; Jeremiah 49:1-6. Jeremiah 25:22. The plural: "kings of Tyre and Sidon," is to be understood as in Jeremiah 25:18. With them are mentioned "the kings of the island" or "of the coast" land, that is, beyond the (Mediterranean) Sea. האי is not Κύπρος (Cyprus), but means, generally, the Phoenician colonies in and upon the Mediterranean. Of the Arabian tribes mentioned in Jeremiah 25:23, the Dedanites are those descended from the Cushite Dedan and living ear Edom, with whom, however, the Abrahamic Dedanite had probably mingled; a famous commercial people, Isaiah 21:13; Ezekiel 27:15, Ezekiel 27:20; Ezekiel 38:13; Job 6:19. Tema is not Tm beyond the Hauran (Wetzst. Reiseber. S. 21 and 93ff.; cf. on the other hand, the same in Del.'s Job, S. 526), but Tem situated on the pilgrims' route from Damascus to Mecca, between Tebk and Wadi el Kora, see Del. on Isaiah 21:14; here, accordingly, the Arabian tribe settled there. Buz is the Arabian race sprung from the second son of Nahor. As to "hair-corners polled," see on Jeremiah 9:25. - The two appellations ערב and "the mixed races that dwell in the wilderness" comprehend the whole of the Arabian races, not merely those that are left after deducting the already (Jeremiah 25:23) mentioned nomad tribes. The latter also dwelt in the wilderness, and the word ערב is a general name, not for the whole of Arabia, but for the nomadic Arabs, see on Ezekiel 27:21, whose tribal chieftains, here called kings, are in Ezek. called נשׂיאים. In Jeremiah 25:25 come three very remote peoples of the east and north-east: Zimri, Elamites, and Medes. The name Zimri is found only here, and has been connected by the Syr. and most comm. with Zimran, Genesis 25:2, a son of Abraham and Keturah. Accordingly זמרי would stand for זמרני, and might be identified with Ζαβράμ, Ptol. vi. 7, 5, a people which occupied a territory between the Arabs and Persians - which would seem to suit our passage. The reference is certainly not to the Ζεμβρῖται in Ethiopia, in the region of the later priestly city Mero (Strabo, 786). On Elam, see on Jeremiah 49:34.

Finally, to make the list complete, Jeremiah 25:26 mentions the kings of the north, those near and those far, and all the kingdoms of the earth. המּמלכות with the article in stat. constr. against the rule. Hence Hitz. and Graf infer that הארץ may not be genuine, it being at the same time superfluous and not given in the lxx. This may be possible, but it is not certain; for in Isaiah 23:17 we find the same pleonastic mode of expression, and there are precedents for the article with the nomen regens. "The one to (or with) the other" means: according as the kingdoms of the north stand in relation to one another, far or near. - After the mention of all the kings and peoples on whom the king of Babylon is to execute judgment, it is said that he himself must at last drink the cup of wrath. שׁשׁך is, according to Jeremiah 51:41, a name for Babylon, as Jerome states, presumably on the authority of his Jewish teacher, who followed the tradition. The name is formed acc. to the Canon Atbash, in virtue of which the letters of the alphabet were put one for the other in the inverse order (ת for א, שׁ for ב, etc.); thus שׁ would correspond to ב and כ to ל. Cf. Buxtorf, Lex. talm. s.v. אתבשׁ and de abbreviaturis hebr. p. 41. A like example is found in Jeremiah 51:1, where כּשׂדּים is represented by לב קמי yb d. The assertion of Gesen. that this way of playing with words was not then in use, is groundless, as it also Hitz.'s, when he says it appeared first during the exile, and is consequently none of Jeremiah's work. It is also erroneous when many comm. remark, that Jeremiah made use of the mysterious name from the fear of weakening the impression of terror which the name of Babylon ought to make on their minds. These assumptions are refuted by Jeremiah 25:12, where there is threatening of the punishment of spoliation made against the king of Babylon and the land of the Chaldeans; and by Jeremiah 51:41, where alongside of Sheshach we find in parallelism Babylon. The Atbash is, both originally and in the present case, no mere playing with words, but a transposition of the letters so as to gain a significant meaning, as may plainly be seen in the transposition to לב , Jeremiah 51:1. This is the case with Sheshach also, which would be a contraction of שׁכשׁך (see Ew. 158, c), from שׁכך, to sink (of the water, Genesis 8:1), to crouch (of the bird-catcher, Jeremiah 5:26). The sig. is therefore a sinking down, so that the threatening, Jeremiah 51:64 : Babel shall sink and not rise again, constitutes a commentary on the name; cf. Hgstb. Christ. iii. p. 377. The name does not sig. humiliation, in support of which Graf has recourse partly to שׁחה, partly to the Arabic usage. For other arbitrary interpretations, see in Ges. thes. p. 1486.

(Note: As has been done with the whole or with parts of Jeremiah 25:12-14, so too the last clause of Jeremiah 25:26 is pronounced by Ew., Hitz., and Graf to be spurious, a gloss that had ultimately found its way into the text. This is affirmed because the clause is wanting in the lxx, and because the prophet could not fitly threaten Babylon along with the other nations (Hitz.); or because "the specification of a single kingdom seems very much out of place, after the enumeration of the countries that are to drink the cup of wrath has been concluded by the preceding comprehensive intimation, 'all the kingdoms of the earth' " (Gr.). Both reasons are valueless. By "shall drink after them" Babylon is sufficiently distinguished from the other kings and countries mentioned, and the reason is given why Babylon is not put on the same footing with them, but is to be made to drink after them.)