Yeremia 46:25

46:25 The Lord God of Israel who rules over all ¹  says, “I will punish Amon, the god of Thebes. ²  I will punish Egypt, its gods, and its kings. I will punish Pharaoh and all who trust in him. ³ 

Nahum 3:8

Nineveh Will Suffer the Same Fate as Thebes

3:8 You are no more secure ⁴  than Thebes ⁵  –

she was located on the banks of the Nile;

the waters surrounded her,

her ⁶  rampart ⁷  was the sea,

the water ⁸  was her wall.

[46:25]  ¹ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.” For the significance of this title see the note at 2:19.

[46:25]  ² tn Heb “Amon of No.”

[46:25]  sn The Egyptian city called No (נֹא, no’) in Hebrew was Thebes. It is located about 400 miles (666 km) south of modern-day Cairo. It was the capital of Upper or southern Egypt and the center for the worship of the God Amon who became the state god of Egypt. Thebes is perhaps best known today for the magnificent temples at Karnak and Luxor on the east bank of the Nile.

[46:25]  ³ tc Heb “Behold I will punish Amon of No and Pharaoh and Egypt and its gods and its kings and Pharaoh and all who trust in him.” There appears to be a copyist slip involving a double writing of וְעַל־פַּרְעֹה (vÿ’al-par’oh). The present translation has followed the suggestion of BHS and deleted the first one since the second is necessary for the syntactical connection, “Pharaoh and all who trust in him.”

[3:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “Are you better than Thebes?”

[3:8]  ⁵ tn Heb “No-Amon.” The name is transliterated by NAB, NASB; many other English versions employ the equivalent “Thebes.”

[3:8]  ⁶ tn The relative pronoun אֲשֶׁר (’asher) is functioning in a possessive sense: “whose” (Job 37:17; Ps 95:5; Isa 5:28; 49:23; Jer 31:32; see HALOT 98 s.v. 4).

[3:8]  ⁷ tn The consonantal form חיל is vocalized in the MT as חֵיל (khel, “rampart”). The LXX translation ἡ ἀρξή (Jh arxh, “strength”) reflects confusion between the relatively rare חֵיל and the more common חַיִל (khayil, “strength”); see HALOT 310-12.

[3:8]  ⁸ tn Heb “from (the) sea.” The form should be emended to מַיִם (mayim, “water”). This is a figurative description of the Nile River: It functioned like a fortress wall for Thebes.