Perverse conduct was the consequence of Israel's apostasy and infidelity, and it led to slavery.
2:14-15 Israel was Yahweh's firstborn son, not a slave or even a home-born servant.77As such he enjoyed the special care and provisions of the Lord. Then why had he become a prey to enemies? Enemy rulers, like young lions, had threatened and devoured Israel's land and destroyed his cities.78The Northern Kingdom had gone into captivity in 722 B.C. After that captivity lions multiplied in the land and became a threat to the people who lived there (cf. 2 Kings 17:25). The Assyrians attacked the Israelites like voracious lions many times.
"Israel, in the metaphor, had not only become a slave, but after a generation or more had become a household servant, one for whom even the memory of freedom had been lost. But the statement of Israel's slavery in the form of two questions implies that slavery should never have come to pass. Israel, in its covenant, had been granted freedom."79
2:16 The Egyptians had cropped Israel's glory. In the ancient world long hair was a glorious thing. Perhaps Pharaoh Shishak's invasion of Judah in 925 B.C. is in view here (1 Kings 14:25-26). A more likely possibility is the slaying of King Josiah at Megiddo, when Pharoah Necho took the crown (king) from the nation's head in 609 B.C. (2 Kings 23:29). In both instances Egypt had shorn Israel.
Memphis (Noph) was the ancient capital of Lower (Northern) Egypt, about 13 miles south of modern Cairo. Tahpanhes (Daphne) stood near Lake Manzaleh in northeastern Egypt. It was the first significant Egyptian town that travelers came to on a land journey from Judah to Egypt. It was about 150 miles across the desert from Gaza. Later, Jeremiah and other Hebrew refugees settled there (43:7-9).
2:17 Now the answer to the question posed in verse 14 comes. The Israelites had brought these calamities on themselves by forsaking Yahweh their God who had led them so competently in the earlier years of their history.
2:18 God's people had turned to Egypt and Assyria for refreshment instead of to Him (cf. Isa. 30:1-5). In Jeremiah's day there was a pro-Egyptian party and another pro-Assyrian party.80The designation of the Nile River as the shihor(lit. blackness) may have been a way of denigrating the river, which was one of Egypt's primary gods. The Nile was muddy and, so, black.
This reference to the Judahites seeking help from Egypt and Assyria probably dates this sermon sometime before the decline of Assyrian supremacy in the ancient Near East, namely, before 612 B.C. when Nineveh fell (cf. 2 Kings 15:19; 16:7; 17:3; Hos. 5:13; 7:11; 8:9).
2:19 The consequences of the people's own wickedness and apostasies would come back on them and plague them. This should teach them that it was morally evil and experientially bitter for them to abandon Yahweh their God. All these bad things happened to them because they did not fear the Lord.
"One may turn to or away from Yahweh, and one may turn to and away from other allegiances. No book in the OT contains so many nuances of this idea as Jeremiah."81
