The families of the north (comp. Jeremiah 1:15, note). And Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant. This is the rendering of the Targum, the Syriac, and the Vulgate, and corresponds with the reading of a few extant manuscripts.
The received text, however, reads, "and unto Nebuchadnezzar," etc. Neither reading is satisfactory. The latter one is intolerably harsh; the former makes Nebuchadnezzar a mere adjunct of the tribes of the north.
In the other passages, moreover, where this king is solemnly entitled "my servant," the clause is the most prominent one in the sentence (see Jeremiah 27:6; Jeremiah 43:10). The words in question have a sort of family resemblance to the glosses which meet us occasionally both in the form of the Hebrew text represented by the Massoretic recension, and those by the principal ancient versions.
The words are omitted by the Septuagint. My servant. Generally to be a "servant" of Jehovah or of any supposed deity is to be a worshipper. Thus Daniel is called by Darius, "servant of the living God" (Daniel 6:20), and thus Abdallah, "servant of Allah," has become a favorite surname of the followers of Mohammed.
In the Book of Jeremiah itself (Jeremiah 30:10; Jeremiah 46:27, Jeremiah 46:28), and in Ezekiel (Ezekiel 37:25), "my servant" is the form in which Jehovah addresses his chosen people; and in the second part of Isaiah the suffering Messiah is so styled.
Here, however, a foreign king is thus entitled. How is this to be explained? Cyrus, no doubt, in Isaiah 44:28, Isaiah 45:1, is called "my shepherd" and "my anointed one;" but then Cyrus, in the view of the prophet, was a genuine though unconscious worshipper of the true God (Isaiah 41:25), whereas Nebuchadnezzar was known to be a polytheist and an idolater.
We must, therefore, take "servant" to be applied to Nebuchadnezzar in a lower sense than to the other bearers of the title. The Hebrew 'ebbed, in fact, may be either "slave" in something approaching to the terrible modern sense, or in the sense in which Eliezer was one (i.
e. little less than a son, and a possible heir, Genesis 24:2; Galatians 4:1), and which is still in full force in Arabia. An astonishment (see on Jeremiah 2:11). An hissing (comp. Jeremiah 18:16; Jeremiah 19:8).