Cambyses’ Conquest of Egypt Is Ascribed to Nebuchadnezzar

This is a relatively late narrative and probably without a strong historical basis, See: Ronnie Goldstein, חיי ירמיהו: גלגולי המסורת על נביא החורבן עד שלהי התקופה המקראית [The Life of Jeremiah: Traditions about the Prophet and Their Evolution in Biblical Times] ספריית האינצקלופדיה המקראית [The Biblical Encyclopaedia Library] 30 (Jerusalem: Bialik, 2013) 131–184.

This piece is an abridgment and adaptation from: Ronnie Goldstein, “Casting Nets and Burning Temples: The Babylonian and Persian Background of Jer 43:8–13*”, Hebrew Bible and Ancient Israel 9 (2020): 62–90. For a short summary of the different approaches concerning the dating of the prophecy, see: William McKane, Jeremiah 26–52, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 1065–1066.

The text reads:

^{ירמיה מג:ה} וַיִּקַּח יוֹחָנָן בֶּן קָרֵחַ וְכָל שָׂרֵי הַחֲיָלִים אֵת כָּל שְׁאֵרִית יְהוּדָה אֲשֶׁר שָׁבוּ מִכָּל הַגּוֹיִם אֲשֶׁר נִדְּחוּ שָׁם לָגוּר בְּאֶרֶץ יְהוּדָה. ^מג:ו אֶת הַגְּבָרִים וְאֶת הַנָּשִׁים וְאֶת הַטַּף וְאֶת בְּנוֹת הַמֶּלֶךְ וְאֵת כָּל הַנֶּפֶשׁ אֲשֶׁר הִנִּיחַ נְבוּזַרְאֲדָן רַב טַבָּחִים אֶת גְּדַלְיָהוּ בֶּן אֲחִיקָם בֶּן שָׁפָן וְאֵת יִרְמְיָהוּ הַנָּבִיא וְאֶת בָּרוּךְ בֶּן נֵרִיָּהוּ. ^מג:ז וַיָּבֹאוּ אֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם כִּי לֹא שָׁמְעוּ בְּקוֹל יְ־הוָה וַיָּבֹאוּ עַד תַּחְפַּנְחֵס.

^{Jer 43:5} Johanan son of Kareah and all the army officers took the entire remnant of Judah—those who had returned from all the countries to which they had been scattered and had sojourned in the land of Judah, ^43:6 men, women, and children; and the daughters of the king and all the people whom Nebuzaradan the chief of the guards had left with Gedaliah son of Ahikam son of Shaphan, as well as the prophet Jeremiah and Baruch son of Neriah—^43:7  and they went to Egypt. They did not obey YHWH. And they arrived at Tahpanhes.

Now called Tell Defenneh (Greek: Daphne), the city was located on the Tanitic branch of the Nile (now part of the Suez Canal).

The Bible spells this kings name in two different ways, Nebuchadnezzar, the more familiar spelling, or Nebuchadrezzar as here. Both are approximations of his Akkadian/Babylonian name, Nabû-kudurri-uṣur meaning “Nabu, watch over my heir.”

Cf. the officials and kings who sat “before the gates of Jerusalem” (Jer 1:15) and the officers who sat “at the middle gate” (Jer 39:3). On this see: Goldstein, Life of Jeremiah, 159-161;  Shalom E. Holtz, “The Babylonian Officials Who Oversaw the Siege of Jerusalem,” TheTorah (2018). For the relationship between the verses in Jeremiah and the Assyrian motif, see Mordechai Cogan, “Sentencing at the Gate in Jeremiah 1:15–16,” Gratz College Annual of Jewish Studies 1 (1972): 3–6; followed by David S. Vanderhooft, The Neo-Babylonian Empire and Babylon in the Latter Prophets, HSM 59 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 139–140.

The place of the motif of the net first appears in Sumerian art and literature, and then becomes quite common throughout Mesopotamia in incantations, hymns, and royal inscriptions. Akkadian literature adopted the use of the net (the Akkadian loanword sapāru) with a figurative meaning and as an attribute for gods and kings.

The lexeme šuparruru does not have a noun form in Akkadian, but the verb (and the adjective derived from it) is generally related to net casting. Hence, it seems that Hebrew שפרירו is to be understand as “a widely cast (net).” Possibly this word is related to Job 26:13, בְּ֭רוּחוֹ שָׁמַ֣יִם שִׁפְרָ֑ה, where it was offered by Naftali H. Tur-Sinai (The Book of Job: A New Commentary [Jerusalem, 1967] 383–384) to read based on the Akkadian sapāru: ברוחו שָׂם ים שְפִרֹה i.e. “with His wind, He put Yam (= the sea) in His net,” or even to derive שפרה from šuparruru as well, as suggested by Samuel, “Job XXVI 12–13 and the Babylonian Story of Creation,” ZA 23 (1911), 3.

^lúPuqudu kīma sapāri ashup dīktašunu adūk, šallassunu mattu ašlul. Hayim Tadmor, The Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III King of Assyria, Fontes ad Res Judaicas Spectantes / Sources for Jewish History (Jerusalem: The Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanites, 1994), 160 [ln 13].

sapār ilāni rabûti bēlīya ša lā naparšudi ishupšunūti ēdu ul ipparšid. Rykle Borger, Beiträge zum Inschriftenwerk Assurbanipals (Wiesbaden: Otto Harassowitz, 1996), 44; IV, 61-62.

Ben-Yehuda's Dictionary of and Thesaurus of the Hebrew Language, s.v. 'שפריר', see under Tur-Sinai's footnote 1, alluding to Akkadian. See also: Naftali H. Tur-Sinai, פשוטו של מקרא [Peshuto shel Mikra] (Jerusalem: Kiryat Sefer, 1967), 3.240.

Habakkuk uses similar imagery, describing the Judeans as fish caught in the Chaldean king’s net:

^{חבקוק א:טו} כֻּלֹּה בְּחַכָּה הֵעֲלָה יְגֹרֵהוּ בְחֶרְמוֹ וְיַאַסְפֵהוּ בְּמִכְמַרְתּוֹ עַל כֵּן יִשְׂמַח וְיָגִיל.

^{Hab 1:15} He has fished them all up with a line, pulled them up in his trawl, and gathered them in his net. That is why he rejoices and is glad.

For the affinities between Jeremiah 15:2 and 43:11 and the various conclusions drawn on this basis, see McKane, Jeremiah 26–52, 1057–1058.

Of the 30 incidences of the root in the Bible, 14 occur in Jeremiah. The expression ... והצתי אש ב is common in the book (21:14, 49:27, 50:32). The affinities between Jer 43:12a and these formulae seem to be responsible for the use of the first person in the MT, which diverges from the easier third person והצית אש reflected in the LXX: see McKane, Jeremiah 26–52, 1056.

The image of the shepherd enveloping himself in his mantle is more obscure. Working in all types of weather conditions—as Jacob notes, הָיִיתִי בַיּוֹם אֲכָלַנִי חֹרֶב וְקֶרַח בַּלָּיְלָה “Often, scorching heat ravaged me by day and frost by night” (Gen 31:40)—shepherds enwrap themselves completely in their robes to keep warm.

kīma tīb mehê ezzi aktum māt Elamti ana sihirtiša. Borger, Beiträge zum Inschriftenwerk Assurbanipals, 38 (A, col. 3, ll. 34–35).

The text reads as follows:

Wolfram von Soden, “Zur Wiederherstellung der Marduk-Gebete BMS 11 und 12,” Iraq 31 (1969): 87–88, lines 50–53. For a (slightly different) English translation, see Benjamin R Foster, Before the Muses (Bethesda: CDL Press, 1993), 594–598, lines 33–37. See also discussion in, Rykle Borger, “Das Dritte ‘Hauss’ der Serie bīt rimki (VR 50–51, Schollmeyer HGS nr. 1),” Journal of Cuneiform Studies 21 (1967): 8, 14, lines 63, 67. Quoted in CAD, Š, 3, s.v. šuparruru v., lex. sec., p. 317.

The Akkadian reads:

alû zumrī ītediq ṣubāti

kīma šuškalli ukattimanni šittu

Tablet II, lines 71–72: see Wilfred G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1960), 42–43.

Prior to its insertion in the present sequence, the original prophecy appears to have contained no specific allusion to the harming of the Judean remnant in Egypt: see McKane, Jeremiah 26–52, 1057; Goldstein, Casting Nets, 89-90.

For an assessment of the sources relating to Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest of Egypt in the twenty-third year of his reign (according to Josephus), see Shmuel Ahituv, “ירמיהו במצרים” [Jeremiah in Egypt] Eretz Israel 27 (2003): 33–40 [p. 35] and the bibliography cited therein (p. 39, nn. 16–18); Israel Eph‛al, “Nebuchadnezzar the Warrior: Remarks on his Military Achievements,” Israel Exploration Journal 53 (2003): 178–191 [183–185]; Dan’el Kahn, “Nebuchadnezzar Fails to Conquer Egypt So Jeremiah’s Prophecy Was Updated,” TheTorah (2022). 

This account of the destruction of the Judean temple in Elephantine closely recalls the depiction of the burning of the temples of the Egyptian gods and the toppling of the Heliopolis obelisks in Jeremiah 43. It thus reinforces the impression that this passage in Jeremiah was written in a prevalent style that also served to record Cambyses’ exploits.

Bezalel Porten and Ada Yardeni, Textbook of Aramaic Documents from Ancient Egypt. Vol. 1: Letters (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1986), 68–71. For a brief summary of the traditions regarding Cambyses’ destruction of the temples, see Pierre Briant, From Cyrus to Alexander: A History of the Persian Empire (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2002), 55–57; Eugene Cruz-Uribe, “The Invasion of Egypt by Cambyses,” Transeuphrathene 25 (2003): 46–50.

See also: Herodotus, Hist. 3.37; Strabo, Geogr. 17.1.27 (see below).

See, McKane, Jeremiah 26–52, 1061. Strabo goes on to describe how there were “several temples [in Thebes], but most of these, too, were mutilated by Cambyses (καὶ τούτων δὲ τὰ πολλὰ ἠκρωτηρίασε Καμβύσης)” (17.1.46): see Horace L. Jones, The Geography of Strabo (London/Cambridge: William Heinemann/Harvard University Press, 1932), 7:78–79, 122–123. In this context, it is noteworthy that in his account of the temples of Heliopolis (ibid, §28), Strabo remarks that: “There is also a kind of hall with numerous columns (στύλων) (as at Memphis, for example), which is constructed in the barbaric manner; for, except for the fact that the columns are large and numerous and form many rows, the hall has nothing pleasing or picturesque.” The LXX to Jer 43:13 renders the Hebrew מצבות by στύλους, which regularly translates עמוד in the Bible—in contrast to the standard Septuagintal translation to מצבה, στήλη. The Hebrew text thus appears to refer to the obelisks destroyed by Cambyses in Heliopolis, the translation in the Septuagint alluding to the pillars in that city referred to by Strabo, which were also shattered by the Persian king: see Nahman Aviad, “Beit-Shemesh (4),” Encyclopedia Biblica 2:119 (Hebrew).

The general traditions regarding the damage inflicted on the temples of Egypt by Cambyses—rooted in historical events—appear to have circulated during the reign of Darius the Great, serving as a contrast to the latter’s positive exploits. The additions at Jer 43:12a and 13 thus postdate the first years of the reign of Darius. For the factors affecting the dating of the traditions relating to Cambyses’s destruction of the Egyptian temples, see Cruz-Uribe, “The Invasion of Egypt by Cambyses.”

Editor’s note: For another example of an update of this type in Jeremiah, see Kahn, “Nebuchadnezzar Fails to Conquer Egypt So Jeremiah’s Prophecy Was Updated.”

The existence of reworked additions in the Bible designed to replace metaphorical language with nonfigurative elements has long been recognized. See Michael A. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 460–463. Yair Zakovitch, מבוא לפרשנות פנים מקראית [An Introduction to Inner-Biblical Interpretation] (Even-Yehuda: Reches, 1992), 127, idem, “Inner-biblical Interpretation,” in A Companion to Biblical Interpretation in Early Judaism, ed. Matthias Henze (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 27–63.  

See Menachem Kister, “A Common Heritage: Biblical Interpretation at Qumran and its Implications,” in Biblical Perspectives: Early Use and Interpretation of the Bible in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Michael E. Stone and Esther G. Chazon (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 103–104 and the bibliography there.