According to the title placed at the head of this prophecy, it was uttered "before Pharaoh smote Gaza." The Pharaoh is evidently Pharaoh Necho, and this capture of Gaza was one of the incidents of the campaign which opened with the victory at Megiddo and concluded so disastrously at Carchemish. Our first impulse is to look for some connection between this incident and the contents of the prophecy: possibly the editor who prefixed the heading may have understood by the northern enemy Pharaoh Necho on his return from Carchemish; but would Jeremiah have described a defeated army thus? "Behold, waters rise out of the north, and become an overflowing torrent; They overflow the land, and all that is therein, the city and its inhabitants. Men cry out, and all the inhabitants of the land howl, At the sound of the stamping of the hoofs of his stallions, At the rattling of his chariots and the rumbling of his wheels." Here as elsewhere the enemy from the north is Nebuchadnezzar. Pharaohs might come and go, winning victories and taking cities, but these broken reeds count for little; not they, but the king of Babylon is the instrument of Jehovah's supreme purpose. The utter terror caused by the Chaldean advance is expressed by a striking figure:-- "The fathers look not back to their children for slackness of hands." Their very bodies are possessed and crippled with fear, their palsied muscles cannot respond to the impulses of natural affection; they can do nothing but hurry on in headlong flight, unable to look round or stretch out a helping hand to their children:-- "Because of the day that cometh for the spoiling of all the Philistines, For cutting off every ally that remaineth unto Tyre and Zidon: For Jehovah spoileth the Philistines, the remnant of the coast of Caphtor.[211] Baldness cometh upon Gaza; Ashkelon is destroyed: O remnant of the Anakim,[212] how long wilt thou cut thyself?"