Jeremiah 47 Footnotes

47:1 Scholars disagree over when this defeat took place. Some deny that Egypt ever fought and defeated Gaza; they attribute the defeat to the Babylonians, known to have defeated Ashkelon in 604 BC. However, the Greek historian Herodotus reported that after Pharaoh Neco defeated Josiah at Megiddo in 609 BC, he conquered the city of Kadytis, generally believed to be Gaza. Neco had other occasions to defeat Gaza, in either 605 BC or 601 BC. Those dates and occasions are speculative, but it is also speculative to contradict the text as it reads and suggest that something entirely different took place.