Tafsiran Yeremia 46:28: Tze'enah Ure'enah & Rashi

“But you have no fear, My servant Jacob, etc.” [46:28]. You Israel have no fear. When I will destroy all the nations where you have been banished among the nations. I, God, am with you and I will not destroy you.

“I will not leave you unpunished, but I will chastise you in measure” [46:28]. Israel, I will punish, not with too little justice and not at one time, and will not diminish you and I do not want to completely exterminate you.

Tanhuma writes: There were four in the world who made themselves as God. Three were from the nations and the fourth from Israel. They are Hiram, king of Tyre, Nebuchadnezzar, Pharaoh, and Joash was the Israelite. The Holy One punished all of them, as we find concerning Nebuchadnezzar, who made himself as a god. The Holy One made him lowly. He had to run away from his kingdom in to the forest and the wilderness for seven years. He had to eat grass, like a wild beast or a domestic animal. Joash made himself for a god. He was concealed in the Temple, where the High Priest used to go on Yom Kippur, once a year.⁹I.e. the Holy of Holies. Joash was concealed in the same place for six years, from the time he was born until he was weaned from his mother’s breast. When he came out in peace, Israelites came to him and said: you must be a god, since nothing happened to you in that holy place. The High Priest only entered there on Yom Kippur and made a joyous celebration when he came out in peace. Therefore, you must be a god. He allowed himself to be convinced and made himself for a god and they bowed down to him.¹⁰Midrash Tanhuma (ed. S. Buber), Vaera, 16.

justly With sparing justice, little by little.

completely destroy Heb. ונקה [lit. clean,] an expression of sweeping and destroying, and Jonathan too rendered it an expression of destroying.