5 Baldness is come on Gaza; Ashkelon is brought to nothing, the remnant of their valley: how long will you cut yourself?
*Minor differences ignored. Grouped by changes, with first version listed as example.
The Prophet returns again to what is figurative, that he might more fully illustrate his prophecy, and more powerfully move the Jews. Now by baldness he points out a sign of mourning; for they were wont even to tear their faces with their nails, and to pluck off their hair. He then says that baldness, or the loss of hair, had come upon Gaza; because the inhabitants of the valley and of the whole land, according to what was usually done in despair, would pluck off their own hair. It is added, Destroyed is Ashkelon This city, we know, had a great name in the land of the Philistines, and was nigh Gaza, as it appears from many parts of Scripture. he mentions the remnants of their valley, or depth, for the word is mq, omek: and though it means a valley, yet the Prophet, no doubt, alludes to the situation of that part, because they were hid, as it were, in a safe place, and they thought themselves secure as those who are hid in caverns, to which an access is not easy; and then Tyre and Sidon, as well as Gaza, were cities on the sea side. As then they dwelt in these deep and hidden places, they thought, themselves far away from every danger and trouble. The Prophet derides this confidence, and says that the remnants of their valley should perish; as though he had said, that there would be no place so deep and hidden where God's vengeance would not penetrate. He at length addresses the whole country, How long wilt thou tear thyself? By tearing he means, no doubt, mourning or lamentation; for they would tear their faces, as it has been said, with their nails, as in the greatest grief. The meaning is, that there would be no end to their calamities, because the Palestines would mourn perpetually: for otherwise they who are even most grievously afflicted do not perpetually mourn, for time alleviates grief and sorrow. The Prophet then shews that so dreadful would be God's vengeance, that evils would be heaped on evils, and thus renewed daily to the Palestines would be the cause of mourning. He afterwards adds, --
Baldness - Extreme mourning (see Jeremiah 16:6).
Is cut off - Others render, is speechless through grief.
With the remnant of their valley - Others, O remnant of their valley, how long wilt thou cut thyself? Their valley is that of Gaza and Ashkelon, the low-lying plain, usually called the Shefelah, which formed the territory of the Philistines. The reading of the Septuagint is remarkable: "the remnant of the Anakim," which probably would mean Gath, the home of giants 1-Samuel 17:4.
Jeremiah 47:6. Or, Alas, Sword of Yahweh, how long wilt thou not rest? For the answer, see Jeremiah 47:7.
Baldness is come upon Gaza - They have cut off their hair in token of deep sorrow and distress.
Ashkelon is cut off - Or put to silence; another mark of the deepest sorrow. Ashkelon was one of the five seignories of the Philistines, Gaza was another.
The remnant of their valley - Or plain; for the whole land of the Philistines was a vast plain, which extended along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea from Phoenicia to the frontiers of Egypt. The whole of this plain, the territory of the Philistines, shall be desolated.
(f) Baldness is come upon Gaza; Ashkelon is cut off [with] the remnant of their valley: how long wilt (g) thou cut thyself?
(f) They who shaved their heads for sorrow and heaviness.
(g) As the heathen used in their mourning, which the Lord forbade his people to do, (Deuteronomy 14:1).
Baldness is come upon Gaza,.... The Targum is,
"vengeance is come to the inhabitants of Gaza.''
It is become like a man whose hair is fallen from his head, or is clean shaved off; its houses were demolished; its inhabitants slain, and their wealth plundered; a pillaged and depopulated place. Some understand this of shaving or tearing off the hair for grief, and mourning because of their calamities; which agrees with the latter clause of the verse:
Ashkelon is cut off with the remnant of their valley; this was one of the live cities of the Philistines; it lay north of Gaza. Herodotus (x) calls Ashkelon a city of Syria, in which was the temple of Urania Venus, destroyed by the Scythians; said to be built by Lydus Ascalus, and called so after his name (y). Of this city was Herod the king, and therefore called an Ashkelonite; it was now destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, but afterwards rebuilt and inhabited; and with it were destroyed the remainder of the cities, towns, and villages, in the valley, adjoining to that and Gaza; or Ashkelon and Gaza, now destroyed, were all that remained of the cities of the valley, and shared the same fate with them. The Targum is,
"the remnant of their strength;''
so Kimchi, who interprets it of the multitude of their wealth and power;
how long wilt thou cut thyself? their faces, arms, and other parts of their body, mourning and lamenting their sad condition; the words of the prophet signifying hereby the dreadfulness of it, and its long continuance.
(x) Clio, sive l. 1. c. 105. (y) Vid. Bochart. Phaleg l. 2. c. 12. p. 88.
Baldness . . . cut thyself--Palestine is represented as a female who has torn off her hair and cut her flesh, the heathenish (Leviticus 19:28) token of mourning (Jeremiah 48:37).
their valley--the long strip of low plain occupied by the Philistines along the Mediterranean, west of the mountains of Judea. The Septuagint reads Anakim, the remains of whom were settled in those regions (Numbers 13:28). Joshua dislodged them so that none were left but in Gaza, Gath, and Ashdod (Joshua 11:21-22). But the parallel (Jeremiah 47:7), "Ashkelon . . . the sea-shore," established English Version here, "Ashkelon . . . their valley."
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. Micah 1:16. נדמתה is rendered by the Vulgate conticuit. After this Graf and Ngelsbach take the meaning of being "speechless through pain and sorrow;" cf. Lamentations 2:10. Others translate "to be destroyed." Both renderings are lexically permissible, for דּמה and דּמם 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. שׁארית עמקם, "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. עמק is suitably applied to the low-lying belt of the country, elsewhere called שׁפלה, "the low country," as distinguished from the hill-country; for עמק does not always denote a deep valley, but is also sometimes used, as in Joshua 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 עמקם into ענקים, 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 Jeremiah 47:5, Philistia is set forth as a woman, who tears her body (with her nails) in despair, makes incisions on her body; cf. Jeremiah 16:6; Jeremiah 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 תּשׁקטי, in Jeremiah 47:7, we must read the 3rd pers. fem. תּשׁקט, as the following להּ shows. The form probably got into the text from an oversight, through looking at תּשׁקטי in Jeremiah 47:6. חוף, "the sea-coast," a designation of Philistia, as in Ezekiel 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; Ezekiel 25:15., but after the exile the threats are once more repeated against the Philistines by Zechariah (Zac 9:5): they only reached their complete fulfilment when, as Zechariah announces, in the addition made to Isaiah 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 Zephaniah 2:10.
The remnant - Those who lived in the valleys near Ashkelon. But thyself - Why will you afflict yourselves, when all your mourning will do you no good.
*More commentary available at chapter level.