Jeremiah25chapter 25

Jeremiah 25:1-3

in the fourth year of Jehoiakim: The date is doubled for a reason: the fourth year of Jehoiakim was also the first year of Nebuchadrezzar, so the same year that begins Babylon's rise in this book also fixes the twenty three years Jeremiah has already preached without being heard. Verse 3 counts from the thirteenth year of Josiah, the call of 1:2, to this day, the prophet's own tally of a ministry the nation refused. Keil places the year at 605 BC, the year of Carchemish, when Babylon's ascent to empire and Judah's sentence become the same event.

Jeremiah 25:4-7

rising early and sending them: The Lord's servants the prophets were sent rising early and sending them, the same figure used of the word's arrival at Jeremiah himself in verse 3, a household rising before dawn to speak because the message could not wait. The terms offered were plain, turn from your evil way and dwell in the land, with no penalty attached but the one already stated, and go not after other gods. Israel's refusal is put in her own hurt rather than God's anger alone, ye have not hearkened unto me, to your own hurt, which the older writers read as judgment explaining itself before it falls.

Jeremiah 25:8-11

Because ye have not heard my words: The sentence is passed because ye have not heard my words, and the instrument named is startling: Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, a pagan emperor called into Jehovah's own employ, which the bench reads as sovereignty over the nations stated as plainly as anywhere in the prophets. The desolation removes the sounds of ordinary life, the voice of mirth, the voice of the bridegroom and the bride, the millstones and the candle, a house going dark and silent rather than merely destroyed. The seventy years is named here for the first time in the book, the term the exiles themselves will read in chapter 29 and Daniel will count out by name in Daniel 9:2.

Jeremiah 25:12-14

when seventy years are accomplished: The same seventy years that measures Judah's servitude also measures Babylon's reprieve; when the term is full the Lord turns to punish the king of Babylon and that nation for their iniquity, the sentence Chronicles closes its own history on and Daniel reads by name. Verse 13 calls the coming judgment on the nations all that is written in this book, which Jeremiah hath prophesied against all the nations, an explicit pointer forward to the oracles of chapters 46 to 51. Verse 14's many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of them also states that Babylon's own empire will be repaid by others in its turn, conquest answered with conquest.

Jeremiah 25:15-17

Take the wine cup of this fury: The sign act is a cup carried in vision from nation to nation, take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it, wrath pictured as a drink forced on those who provoked it. Verse 16 names the effect, they shall drink, and be moved, and be mad, drunkenness as the image of nations reeling under judgment they cannot resist. Then took I the cup at the Lord's hand states Jeremiah's own obedience in the vision, the prophet made to enact what he has only spoken until now; Revelation 14:10 and 16:19 take up the same cup of wrath, a link the notes state without pressing further than the words allow.

Jeremiah 25:18-26

to make them a desolation: The cup passes first to Jerusalem itself, judgment beginning at the house called by God's own name before it touches a single Gentile nation, the pattern Peter will later state as a principle. The catalogue then runs outward by the compass, Egypt, the coastal cities, Edom, Moab and Ammon, Tyre and Zidon, the Arabian tribes, Elam and the Medes, every neighbor Judah watched or feared drawn into the same reckoning. The list closes on the king of Sheshach, Babylon's own name spelled backward through the Hebrew atbash cipher, so that the empire carrying out the sentence is named at the end as also due to drink it, a detail the bench reads as deliberate.

Jeremiah 25:27-29

Drink ye, and be drunken: Refusal is not permitted, if they refuse to take the cup at thine hand to drink, then shalt thou say unto them, Ye shall certainly drink, judgment stated as unavoidable rather than merely threatened. Verse 29 gives the reasoning Peter will later echo, I begin to bring evil on the city which is called by my name, and should ye be utterly unpunished?, the nation nearest to God judged first and hardest, with no nation left exempt, I will call for a sword upon all the inhabitants of the earth. The scope has widened past Judah's neighbors to the whole earth without the text pausing to announce the shift.

Jeremiah 25:30-31

The Lord shall roar from on high: The lion figure returns, the Lord shall roar from on high, the same voice Amos uses for judgment on the nations, paired here with the shout of those that tread the grapes, harvest and judgment pictured together. Verse 31 states the scope in a lawcourt's own language, the Lord hath a controversy with the nations, he will plead with all flesh, judgment framed as a case argued rather than an arbitrary blow. The sentence named here falls specifically on them that are wicked, the plea reaching all flesh even where the sword does not.

Jeremiah 25:32-33

a great whirlwind shall be raised up: The judgment is pictured moving like weather, evil shall go forth from nation to nation, and a great whirlwind shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth, a chain reaction rather than a single stroke. Verse 33 states the scale starkly, the slain of the Lord shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth, denied even the ordinary mercies of lament and burial, they shall not be lamented, neither gathered, nor buried. Dung upon the ground is the same image chapters 8 and 16 already used of Jerusalem's own dead, the city's fate now generalized to the nations that shared her sins.

Jeremiah 25:34-36

Howl, ye shepherds, and cry: The address turns to the kings and princes under the shepherd figure already used in chapter 23, howl, ye shepherds, and cry, and wallow yourselves in the ashes, ye principal of the flock, rulers who fed themselves now facing the slaughter they permitted. Ye shall fall like a pleasant vessel pictures the leadership class as fine pottery about to be dropped, valuable and about to be worthless. Verse 35's flight with no way to escape and verse 36's cry heard because the Lord hath spoiled their pasture state that the shepherds' own provision, the throne and the land, is the thing being taken from under them.

Jeremiah 25:37-38

the peaceable habitations are cut down: The peaceable habitations are cut down because of the fierce anger of the Lord ends the oracle where it began, ordinary settled life silenced by the same anger that opened the chapter. He hath forsaken his covert, as the lion pictures God withdrawing the restraint that had sheltered the land, the same lion that roared in verse 30 now leaving his den, so the predator's absence, not merely his presence, becomes the danger. Their land is desolate because of the fierceness of the oppressor closes the chapter on the instrument named at verse 9, Nebuchadrezzar, called nowhere else in Scripture God's own servant.