Today’s reading: Jeremiah 47; 1 Corinthians 5-6
How incredibly ironic is it that God uses Egypt, not Israel, to finally wipe out the Philistines??
The Philistines were the last vestiges of the giant clans, the descendants of the Nephilim, that needed to be destroyed. If you’re not familiar with the Nephilim, they were half-breed human/divine beings, resulting from the spiritual rebellion described in Genesis 6. Sons of God, non-human divine beings, were attracted to human women and came down to earth and had children with them. Their children, the Nephilim, were half-human half-spiritual being, and are referred to in Genesis 6 as the great men of old, the mighty men of renown. God dealt with the angels personally, locking them away for their transgression until the day of judgement, but He had His people deal with the peoples that sprung forth from the Nephilim.
It wasn’t just by Israel either, but by the Ishmaelites (descendants of Abraham by Hagar), the Edomites (descendants of Isaac through Esau), and even by the descendants of Lot (Abraham’s nephew), by whom a number of the giant clans were wiped out. But Israel was charged with wiping out the giant clans that were still in the land of Canaan when they arrived from Egypt, and the Philistines were one such clan. David made a good start of wiping out the Philistines, but then the kings following him didn’t finish the job, allowing the Philistines to continue. This was problematic as the existence of the Nephilim was a spiritual affront to God and His people, which is why His people were supposed to deal with them.
The reason Egypt is the ironic stand-in here is that they are the prototypical agent of chaos, the force opposed to God and His people, from the time of the Exodus onward. Egypt is the nation that stood against God, His people, and His plans, enslaving the Israelites and trying to stop God from taking them out of Egypt and to the promised land. They, like the Nephilim, are positioned as directly opposed to the Lord. This is why every major nation after them that opposed Israel (Assyria, Babylon, Greece, and Rome) are painted in exodus imagery and talked about in comparison to Egypt. They are more powerful than Egypt, and do more to oppose God’s plans than Egypt did, but Egypt was the first, so all others are spoken about in context of Egypt.
This is why Jeremiah 47 is so ironic. Israel has failed in faithfulness so badly that God is even having to use the prototypical agent of chaos, opposed to Him, as the means by which He finally eradicates the last vestiges of the spiritual rebellion that resulted in the Nephilim. God, in His sovereignty, can certainly use any people or nation He desires, just as He is using Assyria and Babylon to punish His people, but for Him to use Egypt to fulfill a primary role He had intended for His people, shows just how far gone Israel was spiritually…
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