They cannot stand
The inability of the warriors to "stand" signifies their defeat and collapse. In the Hebrew context, to "stand" often implies maintaining one's position or prevailing in battle. The phrase suggests a complete and utter failure, not due to a lack of skill or courage, but because of a higher power at work. This highlights the futility of relying solely on human strength and the importance of recognizing God's sovereignty over all earthly powers.

for the LORD has thrust them down
This clause provides the reason for the warriors' downfall. The "LORD" here is "Yahweh," the covenant name of God, emphasizing His personal involvement and authority. The verb "thrust" conveys a forceful action, indicating that it is God Himself who has actively caused their defeat. This underscores a central theme in the book of Jeremiah: God's judgment against nations that oppose His will. The historical context is crucial here, as this prophecy was fulfilled during the Battle of Carchemish, where the Egyptian army was decisively defeated by the Babylonians. This serves as a powerful reminder of God's control over history and His ability to humble even the mightiest of nations.

(1) strong man, e.g. Judges 5:22 and Lamentations 1:15;

(2) steer, bull, e.g. Psalm 22:13 and Psalm 50:13, and (metaphorically of princes) Psalm 68:31. It is a tenable view that "thy strong one" is to be understood distributively as equivalent to "every strong one of thine." But it is certainly more plausible to regard the phrase as a synonym for Apis, the sacred bull in which the supreme god Osiris was believed by the Egyptians to be incarnate. This was a superstition (strange, no doubt, but not so ignoble as some have thought) as deeply ingrained in the Egyptian mind as any in their complicated religion. "In fact, they believed that the supreme God was with them when they possessed a bull bearing certain hieratic marks, the signs of the incarnation of the divinity" (Pierrot). His death was the signal for a mourning as general as for a Pharaoh, and the funeral ceremonies (accounts of which are given in the inscriptions) were equally splendid. M. Mariette has discovered, in the neighbourhood of Memphis, a necropolis in which the Apis bulls were successively interred from the eighteenth dynasty to the close of the period of the Ptolemies. For the Apis to be "swept away" like ordinary plunder, or "cast down" in the slaughtering trough (comp. Isaiah 34:7), was indeed a token that the glory of Egypt had departed. It is a singular coincidence that the very word here employed by Jeremiah for "bull" (abbir) was adopted (like many other words) into the Egyptian language - it received the slightly modified form aber. The Septuagint, it should be added, is in favour of the general view of the verse thus obtained, and the authority of the Egyptian-Jewish version in a prophecy relative to Egypt is not slight. Its rendering of the first half is, "Why hath Apis, thy chosen calf, fled?" But the probability is that it read the Hebrew differently, "Why hath Khaph ( = Apis), thy chosen one, fled?" This merely involves grouping some letters otherwise, and reading one word a little differently.

Parallel Commentaries ...