Yeremia 25:15-19

Judah and the Nations Will Experience God’s Wrath

25:15 So ¹  the Lord, the God of Israel, spoke to me in a vision. ²  “Take this cup from my hand. It is filled with the wine of my wrath. ³  Take it and make the nations to whom I send you drink it. 25:16 When they have drunk it, they will stagger to and fro ⁴  and act insane. For I will send wars sweeping through them.” ⁵ 

25:17 So I took the cup from the Lord’s hand. I made all the nations to whom he sent me drink the wine of his wrath. ⁶  25:18 I made Jerusalem ⁷  and the cities of Judah, its kings and its officials drink it. ⁸  I did it so Judah would become a ruin. I did it so Judah, its kings, and its officials would become an object ⁹  of horror and of hissing scorn, an example used in curses. ¹⁰  Such is already becoming the case! ¹¹  25:19 I made all of these other people drink it: Pharaoh, king of Egypt; ¹²  his attendants, his officials, his people,

Yeremia 27:6-11

27:6 I have at this time placed all these nations of yours under the power ¹³  of my servant, ¹⁴  King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. I have even made all the wild animals subject to him. ¹⁵  27:7 All nations must serve him and his son and grandson ¹⁶  until the time comes for his own nation to fall. ¹⁷  Then many nations and great kings will in turn subjugate Babylon. ¹⁸  27:8 But suppose a nation or a kingdom will not be subject to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Suppose it will not submit to the yoke of servitude to ¹⁹  him. I, the Lord, affirm that ²⁰  I will punish that nation. I will use the king of Babylon to punish it ²¹  with war, ²²  starvation, and disease until I have destroyed it. ²³  27:9 So do not listen to your prophets or to those who claim to predict the future by divination, ²⁴  by dreams, by consulting the dead, ²⁵  or by practicing magic. They keep telling you, ‘You do not need to be ²⁶  subject to the king of Babylon.’ 27:10 Do not listen to them, ²⁷  because their prophecies are lies. ²⁸  Listening to them will only cause you ²⁹  to be taken far away from your native land. I will drive you out of your country and you will die in exile. ³⁰  27:11 Things will go better for the nation that submits to the yoke of servitude to ³¹  the king of Babylon and is subject to him. I will leave that nation ³²  in its native land. Its people can continue to farm it and live in it. I, the Lord, affirm it!”’” ³³ 

[25:15]  ¹ tn This is an attempt to render the Hebrew particle כִּי (ki) which is probably being used in the sense that BDB 473-74 s.v. כִּי 3.c notes, i.e., the causal connection is somewhat loose, related here to the prophecies against the nations. “So” seems to be the most appropriate way to represent this.

[25:15]  ² tn Heb “Thus said the Lord, the God of Israel, to me.” It is generally understood that the communication is visionary. God does not have a “hand” and the action of going to the nations and making them drink of the cup are scarcely literal. The words are supplied in the translation to show the figurative nature of this passage.

[25:15]  ³ sn “Drinking from the cup of wrath” is a common figure to represent being punished by God. Isaiah had used it earlier to refer to the punishment which Judah was to suffer and from which God would deliver her (Isa 51:17, 22) and Jeremiah’s contemporary Habakkuk uses it of Babylon “pouring out its wrath” on the nations and in turn being forced to drink the bitter cup herself (Hab 2:15-16). In Jer 51:7 the Lord will identify Babylon as the cup which makes the nations stagger. In v. 16 drinking from the cup will be identified with the sword (i.e., wars) that the Lord will send against the nations. Babylon is also to be identified as the sword (cf. Jer 51:20-23). What is being alluded to here in highly figurative language is the judgment that the Lord will wreak on the nations listed here through the Babylonians. The prophecy given here in symbolical form is thus an expansion of the one in vv. 9-11.

[25:16]  ⁴ tn There is some debate about the meaning of the verb here. Both BDB 172 s.v. גָּעַשׁ Hithpo and KBL 191 s.v. גָּעַשׁ Hitpol interpret this of the back and forth movement of staggering. HALOT 192 s.v. גָּעַשׁ Hitpo interprets it as vomiting. The word is used elsewhere of the up and down movement of the mountains (2 Sam 22:8) and the up and down movement of the rolling waves of the Nile (Jer 46:7, 8). The fact that a different verb is used in v. 27 for vomiting would appear to argue against it referring to vomiting (contra W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah [Hermeneia], 1:674; it is “they” that do this not their stomachs).

[25:16]  ⁵ tn Heb “because of the sword that I will send among them.” Here, as often elsewhere in Jeremiah, the sword is figurative for warfare which brings death. See, e.g., 15:2. The causal particle here is found in verbal locutions where it is the cause of emotional states or action. Hence there are really two “agents” which produce the effects of “staggering” and “acting insane,” the cup filled with God’s wrath and the sword. The sword is the “more literal” and the actual agent by which the first agent’s action is carried out.

[25:17]  ⁶ tn The words “the wine of his wrath” are not in the text but are implicit in the metaphor (see vv. 15-16). They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[25:18]  ⁷ map For location see Map5 B1; Map6 F3; Map7 E2; Map8 F2; Map10 B3; JP1 F4; JP2 F4; JP3 F4; JP4 F4.

[25:18]  ⁸ tn The words “I made” and “drink it” are not in the text. The text from v. 18 to v. 26 contains a list of the nations that Jeremiah “made drink it.” The words are supplied in the translation here and at the beginning of v. 19 for the sake of clarity. See also the note on v. 26.

[25:18]  ⁹ tn Heb “in order to make them a ruin, an object of…” The sentence is broken up and the antecedents are made specific for the sake of clarity and English style.

[25:18]  ¹⁰ tn See the study note on 24:9 for explanation.

[25:18]  ¹¹ tn Heb “as it is today.” This phrase would obviously be more appropriate after all these things had happened as is the case in 44:6, 23 where the verbs referring to these conditions are past. Some see this phrase as a marginal gloss added after the tragedies of 597 b.c. or 586 b.c. However, it may refer here to the beginning stages where Judah has already suffered the loss of Josiah, of its freedom, of some of its temple treasures, and of some of its leaders (Dan 1:1-3. The different date for Jehoiakim there is due to the different method of counting the king’s first year; the third year there is the same as the fourth year in 25:1).

[25:19]  ¹² sn See further Jer 46:2-28 for the judgment against Egypt.

[27:6]  ¹³ tn Heb “have given…into the hand of.”

[27:6]  ¹⁴ sn See the study note on 25:9 for the significance of the application of this term to Nebuchadnezzar.

[27:6]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “I have given…to him to serve him.” The verb “give” in this syntactical situation is functioning like the Hiphil stem, i.e., as a causative. See Dan 1:9 for parallel usage. For the usage of “serve” meaning “be subject to” compare 2 Sam 22:44 and BDB 713 s.v. עָבַד 3.

[27:6]  sn This statement is rhetorical, emphasizing the totality of Nebuchadnezzar’s dominion. Neither here nor in Dan 2:38 is it to be understood literally.

[27:7]  ¹⁶ sn This is a figure that emphasizes that they will serve for a long time but not for an unlimited duration. The kingdom of Babylon lasted a relatively short time by ancient standards. It lasted from 605 b.c. when Nebuchadnezzar defeated Necho at Carchemish until the fall of Babylon in 538 b.c. There were only four rulers. Nebuchadnezzar was succeeded by his son, Evil Merodach (cf. 52:31), and two other rulers who were not descended from him.

[27:7]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “until the time of his land, even his, comes.” The independent pronoun is placed here for emphasis on the possessive pronoun. The word “time” is used by substitution for the things that are done in it (compare in the NT John 2:4; 7:30; 8:20 “his hour had not yet come”).

[27:7]  sn See Jer 25:12-14, 16.

[27:7]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “him.” This is a good example of the figure of substitution where the person is put for his descendants or the nation or subject he rules. (See Gen 28:13-14 for another good example and Acts 22:7 in the NT.)

[27:8]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “put their necks in the yoke of.” See the study note on v. 2 for the figure.

[27:8]  ²⁰ tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”

[27:8]  ²¹ tn Heb “The nation and/or the kingdom which will not serve him, Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and which will not put its neck in the yoke of the king of Babylon, by sword, starvation, and disease I will punish [or more literally, “visit upon”] that nation, oracle of the Lord.” The long complex Hebrew sentence has been broken up in conformity with contemporary English style and the figures interpreted for the sake of clarity. The particle אֵת, the sign of the accusative, before “which will not put…” is a little unusual here. For its use to introduce a new topic (here a second relative clause) see BDB 85 s.v. אֵת 3.α.

[27:8]  ²² tn Heb “with/by the sword.”

[27:8]  ²³ tc The verb translated “destroy” (תָּמַם, tamam) is usually intransitive in the stem of the verb used here. It is found in a transitive sense elsewhere only in Ps 64:7. BDB 1070 s.v. תָּמַם 7 emends both texts. In this case they recommend תִּתִּי (titi): “until I give them into his hand.” That reading is suggested by the texts of the Syriac and Targumic translations (see BHS fn c). The Greek translation supports reading the verb “destroy” but treats it as though it were intransitive “until they are destroyed by his hand” (reading תֻּמָּם [tummam]). The MT here is accepted as the more difficult reading and support is seen in the transitive use of the verb in Ps 64:7.

[27:8]  tn Heb “I will punish that nation until I have destroyed them [i.e., its people] by his hand.” “Hand” here refers to agency. Hence, “I will use him.”

[27:9]  ²⁴ sn Various means of divination are alluded to in the OT. For example, Ezek 21:26-27 alludes to throwing down arrows to see which way they fall and consulting the shape of the liver of slaughtered animals. Gen 44:5 alludes to reading the future through pouring liquid in a cup. The means alluded to in this verse were all classified as pagan and prohibited as illegitimate in Deut 18:10-14. The Lord had promised that he would speak to them through prophets like Moses (Deut 18:15, 18). But even prophets could lie. Hence, the Lord told them that the test of a true prophet was whether what he said came true or not (Deut 18:20-22). An example of false prophesying and the vindication of the true as opposed to the false will be given in the chapter that follows this.

[27:9]  ²⁵ sn An example of this is seen in 1 Sam 28.

[27:9]  ²⁶ tn The verb in this context is best taken as a negative obligatory imperfect. See IBHS 508-9 §31.4g for discussion and examples. See Exod 4:15 as an example of positive obligation.

[27:10]  ²⁷ tn The words “Don’t listen to them” have been repeated from v. 9a to pick up the causal connection between v. 9a and v. 10 that is formally introduced by a causal particle in v. 10 in the original text.

[27:10]  ²⁸ tn Heb “they are prophesying a lie.”

[27:10]  ²⁹ tn Heb “lies will result in your being taken far…” (לְמַעַן [lÿma’an] + infinitive). This is a rather clear case of the particle לְמַעַן introducing result (contra BDB 775 s.v. מַעַן note 1. There is no irony in this statement; it is a bold prediction).

[27:10]  ³⁰ tn The words “out of your country” are not in the text but are implicit in the meaning of the verb. The words “in exile” are also not in the text but are implicit in the context. These words have been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[27:11]  ³¹ tn Heb “put their necks in the yoke of.” See the study note on v. 2 for the figure.

[27:11]  ³² tn The words “Things will go better for” are not in the text. They are supplied contextually as a means of breaking up the awkward syntax of the original which reads “The nation which brings its neck under the yoke of the king of Babylon and subjects itself to him, I will leave it…”

[27:11]  ³³ tn Heb “oracle of the Lord.”