Jeremiah 44:29-30

29, 30. This shall be a sign… I will give Pharaoh-hophra, etc. This monarch succeeded to the Egyptian throne the year before the capture of Jerusalem. He reigned nineteen years. Finally a rebellion occurred on account of his defeat by the Cyrenians, and the suspicion that he had betrayed the native troops in order to establish his personal ascendency by means of his mercenaries. Amasis commanded the Egyptians and Hophra the Greek mercenaries. The latter was defeated and taken prisoner, and, after being kept some time in confinement, he was given up to his enemies, who put him to death by strangling.

Some expositors have objected to the genuineness of the passage, Jeremiah 44:29-30, on internal grounds: 1) That the fulfilment is too exact. 2) That it is too remote. 3) That the style is dead and mechanical. 4) There is no other such sign in Jeremiah. But there is little force in any of these considerations, while the last is evidently in favour of the genuineness of the passage. If there is nothing like it, it is not likely to be an interpolation. As to the objection that the fulfilment was too distant to be a sign to those to whom Jeremiah spoke, we have to say: ( a) To be a sign it need not be immediate. Its value as such is increased rather than diminished by the lapse of time. ( b) But its fulfilment began within possibly six or eight years. Hophra had now been two years on the throne. It has been estimated that he was ten years a prisoner. His death occurred nineteen years after he became king.

Some difficulty has been experienced by Nagelsbach in reconciling the apparent teaching of this chapter, that the Jews in Egypt should be utterly exterminated, with the fact that in the time of Alexander they were very numerous, and Ptolemy Philadelphus at one time liberated 100,000 Jewish slaves. In reply: 1) This chapter denounces extermination against such Jews only as at that time went down to Egypt contrary to the command of God, and persisted in their idolatry. Those who were there before, those who came after, (and Ptolemy I., about 320 B.C., captured Jerusalem on a sabbath day, took a great number of captives, and carried them down into Egypt,) and those who maintained the worship of Jehovah, are excluded from the judgments denounced in this chapter. 2) There is no proof that at the time of Alexander the Jews in Egypt were very numerous. 3) Centuries of time provide for great increase, not only by propagation, but also by immigration.