Jer 25:15-29 | KD | STEP | The cup of God’s fury. - Jer 25:15. "For thus hath Jahveh, the God of Israel, said to me: Take this cup of the wine of fury at my hand, and give it to drink to all the peoples to whom I send thee, Jer 25:16. That they may drink, and reel, and be mad, because of the sword that I send amongst them. Jer 25:17. And I took the cup at the hand of Jahveh, and made all the peoples drink it to whom Jahveh had sent me: Jer 25:18. Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, and her kings, her princes, to make them a desolation and an astonishment, an hissing and a curse, as it is this day; Jer 25:19. Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and his servants, and his princes, and all his people; Jer 25:20. And all the mixed races and all the kings of the land of Uz, and all the kings of the land of the Philistines, Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron, and the remnant of Ashdod; Jer 25:21. Edom, and Moab, and the sons of Ammon; Jer 25:22. All the kings of Tyre, all the kings of Sidon, and the kings of the islands beyond the sea; Jer 25:23. Dedan, and Tema, and Buz, and all with the corners of their hair polled; Jer 25:24. And all the kings of Arabia, and all the kings of the mixed races that dwell in the wilderness; Jer 25:25. All the kings of Zimri, and all the kings of Elam, and all the kings of Media; Jer 25:26. And all the kings of the north, near and far, one with another, and all the kingdoms of the world, which are upon the face of the earth; and the king of Sheshach shall drink after them. Jer 25:27. And say to them: Thus hath Jahveh, the God of Israel, said: Drink and be drunken, and spue, and fall and rise not up again, because of the sword which I send among you. Jer 25:28. And if it be that they refuse to take the cup out of thine hand to drink, then say to them: Thus hath Jahveh of hosts said: Drink ye shall. Jer 25:29. For, behold, on the city upon which my name is named I begin to bring evil, and ye think to go unpunished? Ye shall not go unpunished; for I call the sword against all inhabitants of the earth, saith Jahveh of hosts." To illustrate more fully the threatening against Judah and all peoples, Jer 25:9., the judgment the Lord is about to execute on all the world is set forth under the similitude of a flagon filled with wrath, which the prophet is to hand to all the kings and peoples, one after another, and which he does give them to drink. The symbolical action imposed upon the prophet and, acc. to , performed by him, serves to give emphasis to the threatening, and is therefore introduced by כּי; of which Graf erroneously affirms that it conveys a meaning only when are omitted. Giving the peoples to drink of the cup of wrath is a figure not uncommon with the prophets for divine chastisements to be inflicted; cf. ; ; , ; Eze 23:31., ; ; , etc. The cup of wine which is wrath (fury). החמּה is an explanatory apposition to "wine." The wine with which the cup is filled is the wrath of God. הזּאת belongs to כּוּס, which is fem., cf. , ; , whereas אותו belongs to the wine which is wrath. In , where the purpose with which the cup of wrath is to be presented is given, figure is exchanged for fact: they shall reel and become mad because of the sword which the Lord sends amidst them. To reel, sway to and fro, like drunken men. התהלל, demean oneself insanely, be mad. The sword as a weapon of war stands often for war, and the thought is: war with its horrors will stupefy the peoples, so that they perish helpless and powerless.

‏ Jeremiah 25:15-29

Jer 25:15-16 The cup of God’s fury. - Jer 25:15. "For thus hath Jahveh, the God of Israel, said to me: Take this cup of the wine of fury at my hand, and give it to drink to all the peoples to whom I send thee, Jer 25:16. That they may drink, and reel, and be mad, because of the sword that I send amongst them. Jer 25:17. And I took the cup at the hand of Jahveh, and made all the peoples drink it to whom Jahveh had sent me: Jer 25:18. Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, and her kings, her princes, to make them a desolation and an astonishment, an hissing and a curse, as it is this day; Jer 25:19. Pharaoh the king of Egypt, and his servants, and his princes, and all his people; Jer 25:20. And all the mixed races and all the kings of the land of Uz, and all the kings of the land of the Philistines, Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron, and the remnant of Ashdod; Jer 25:21. Edom, and Moab, and the sons of Ammon; Jer 25:22. All the kings of Tyre, all the kings of Sidon, and the kings of the islands beyond the sea; Jer 25:23. Dedan, and Tema, and Buz, and all with the corners of their hair polled; Jer 25:24. And all the kings of Arabia, and all the kings of the mixed races that dwell in the wilderness; Jer 25:25. All the kings of Zimri, and all the kings of Elam, and all the kings of Media; Jer 25:26. And all the kings of the north, near and far, one with another, and all the kingdoms of the world, which are upon the face of the earth; and the king of Sheshach shall drink after them. Jer 25:27. And say to them: Thus hath Jahveh, the God of Israel, said: Drink and be drunken, and spue, and fall and rise not up again, because of the sword which I send among you. Jer 25:28. And if it be that they refuse to take the cup out of thine hand to drink, then say to them: Thus hath Jahveh of hosts said: Drink ye shall. Jer 25:29. For, behold, on the city upon which my name is named I begin to bring evil, and ye think to go unpunished? Ye shall not go unpunished; for I call the sword against all inhabitants of the earth, saith Jahveh of hosts."

To illustrate more fully the threatening against Judah and all peoples, Jer 25:9., the judgment the Lord is about to execute on all the world is set forth under the similitude of a flagon filled with wrath, which the prophet is to hand to all the kings and peoples, one after another, and which he does give them to drink. The symbolical action imposed upon the prophet and, acc. to Jer 25:17, performed by him, serves to give emphasis to the threatening, and is therefore introduced by כּי; of which Graf erroneously affirms that it conveys a meaning only when Jer 25:11-14 are omitted. Giving the peoples to drink of the cup of wrath is a figure not uncommon with the prophets for divine chastisements to be inflicted; cf. Jer 49:12; Jer 51:7; Isa 51:17, Isa 51:22; Eze 23:31., Hab 2:15; Psa 60:5; Psa 75:9, etc. The cup of wine which is wrath (fury). החמּה is an explanatory apposition to "wine." The wine with which the cup is filled is the wrath of God. הזּאת belongs to כּוּס, which is fem., cf. Eze 23:32, Eze 23:34; Lam 4:21, whereas אותו belongs to the wine which is wrath. In Jer 25:16, where the purpose with which the cup of wrath is to be presented is given, figure is exchanged for fact: they shall reel and become mad because of the sword which the Lord sends amidst them. To reel, sway to and fro, like drunken men. התהלל, demean oneself insanely, be mad. The sword as a weapon of war stands often for war, and the thought is: war with its horrors will stupefy the peoples, so that they perish helpless and powerless. Jer 25:17-18

This duty imposed by the Lord Jeremiah performs; he takes the cup and makes all peoples drink it. Here the question has been suggested, how Jeremiah performed this commission: whether he made journeys to the various kings and peoples, or, as J. D. Mich. thought, gave the cup to ambassadors, who were perhaps then in Jerusalem. This question is the result of an imperfect understanding of the case. The prophet does not receive from god a flagon filled with wine which he is to give, as a symbol of divine wrath, to the kings and peoples; he receives a cup filled with the wrath of God, which is to intoxicate those that drink of it. As the wrath of God is no essence that may be drunk by the bodily act, so manifestly the cup is no material cup, and the drinking of it no act of the outer, physical reality. The whole action is accordingly only emblematical of a real work of God wrought on kings and peoples, and is performed by Jeremiah when he announces what he is commanded. And the announcement he accomplished not by travelling to each of the nations named, but by declaring to the king and his princes in Jerusalem the divine decree of judgment.

The enumeration begins with Judah, Jer 25:18, on which first judgment is to come. Along with it are named Jerusalem, the capital, and the other cities, and then the kings and princes; whereas in what follows, for the most part only the kings, or, alternating with them, the peoples, are mentioned, to show that kings and peoples alike must fall before the coming judgment. The plural "kings of Judah" is used as in Jer 19:3. The consequence of the judgment: to make them a desolation, etc., runs as in Jer 25:9, Jer 25:11, Jer 19:8; Jer 24:9. כּיּום הזּה has here the force: as is now about to happen. Jer 25:19-26

The enumeration of the heathen nations begins with Egypt and goes northwards, the peoples dwelling to the east and west of Judah being ranged alongside one another. First we have in Jer 25:20 the races of Arabia and Philistia that bordered on Egypt to the east and west; and then in Jer 25:21 the Edomites, Moabites, and Ammonites to the east, and, Jer 25:22, the Phoenicians with their colonies to the west. Next we have the Arabian tribes of the desert extending eastwards from Palestine to the Euphrates (Jer 25:23, Jer 25:24); then the Elamites and Medes in the distant east (Jer 25:25), the near and distant kings of the north, and all kingdoms upon earth; last of all the king of Babylon (Jer 25:26). כּל־הערב, lxx: πάντας τοῦς συμμίκτους, and Jerome: cunctusque qui non est Aegyptius, sed in ejus regionibus commoratur. The word means originally a mixed multitude of different races that attach themselves to one people and dwell as strangers amongst them; cf. Exo 12:38 and Neh 13:3. Here it is races that in part dwelt on the borders of Egypt and were in subjection to that people. It is rendered accordingly "vassals" by Ew.; an interpretation that suits the present verse very well, but will not do in Jer 25:24. It is certainly too narrow a view, to confine the reference of the word to the mercenaries or Ionian and Carian troops by whose help Necho’s father Psammetichus acquired sole supremacy (Graf), although this be the reference of the same word in Eze 30:5. The land of Uz is, acc. to the present passage and to Lam 4:21, where the daughter of Edom dwells in the land of Uz, to be sought for in the neighbourhood of Idumaea and the Egyptian border. To delete the words "and all the kings of the land of Uz" as a gloss, with Hitz. and Gr., because they are not in the lxx, is an exercise of critical violence. The lxx omitted them for the same reason as that on which Hitz. still lays stress - namely, that they manifestly do not belong to this place, but to Jer 25:23. And this argument is based on the idea that the land of Uz ( ̓Αυσῖτις) lies much farther to the north in Arabia Deserta, in the Hauran or the region of Damascus, or that it is a collective name for the whole northern region of Arabia Deserta that stretches from Idumaea as far as Syria; see Del. on Job 1:1, and Wetzstein in Del.'s Job, S. 536f. This is an assumption for which valid proofs are not before us. The late oriental legends as to Job’s native country do not suffice for this. The kings of the land of the Philistines are the kings of the four towns next in order mentioned, with their territories, cf. Jos 13:3; 1Sa 6:4. The fifth of the towns of the lords of the Philistines, Gath, is omitted here as it was before this, in Amo 1:7. and Zep 2:4, and later in Zec 9:5, not because Gath had already fallen into premature decay; for in Amos’ time Gath was still a very important city. It is rather, apparently, because Gath had ceased to be the capital of a separate kingdom or principality. There is remaining now only a remnant of Ashdod; for after a twenty-nine years’ siege, this town was taken by Psammetichus and destroyed (Herod. ii. 157), so that thus the whole territory great lost its importance. Jer 25:21. On Edom, Moab, and the Ammonites, cf. Jer 49:7-22; Jer 48:1; Jer 49:1-6. Jer 25:22. The plural: "kings of Tyre and Sidon," is to be understood as in Jer 25:18. With them are mentioned "the kings of the island" or "of the coast" land, that is, beyond the (Mediterranean) Sea. האי is not Κύπρος (Cyprus), but means, generally, the Phoenician colonies in and upon the Mediterranean. Of the Arabian tribes mentioned in Jer 25:23, the Dedanites are those descended from the Cushite Dedan and living ear Edom, with whom, however, the Abrahamic Dedanite had probably mingled; a famous commercial people, Isa 21:13; Eze 27:15, Eze 27:20; Eze 38:13; Job 6:19. Tema is not Têmâ beyond the Hauran (Wetzst. Reiseber. S. 21 and 93ff.; cf. on the other hand, the same in Del.'s Job, S. 526), but Temâ situated on the pilgrims’ route from Damascus to Mecca, between Tebûk and Wadi el Kora, see Del. on Isa 21:14; here, accordingly, the Arabian tribe settled there. Buz is the Arabian race sprung from the second son of Nahor. As to "hair-corners polled," see on Jer 9:25. - The two appellations ערב and "the mixed races that dwell in the wilderness" comprehend the whole of the Arabian races, not merely those that are left after deducting the already (Jer 25:23) mentioned nomad tribes. The latter also dwelt in the wilderness, and the word ערב is a general name, not for the whole of Arabia, but for the nomadic Arabs, see on Eze 27:21, whose tribal chieftains, here called kings, are in Ezek. called נשׂיאים. In Jer 25:25 come three very remote peoples of the east and north-east: Zimri, Elamites, and Medes. The name Zimri is found only here, and has been connected by the Syr. and most comm. with Zimran, Gen 25:2, a son of Abraham and Keturah. Accordingly זמרי would stand for זמרני, and might be identified with Ζαβράμ, Ptol. vi. 7, §5, a people which occupied a territory between the Arabs and Persians - which would seem to suit our passage. The reference is certainly not to the Ζεμβρῖται in Ethiopia, in the region of the later priestly city Meroë (Strabo, 786). On Elam, see on Jer 49:34.

Finally, to make the list complete, Jer 25:26 mentions the kings of the north, those near and those far, and all the kingdoms of the earth. המּמלכות with the article in stat. constr. against the rule. Hence Hitz. and Graf infer that הארץ may not be genuine, it being at the same time superfluous and not given in the lxx. This may be possible, but it is not certain; for in Isa 23:17 we find the same pleonastic mode of expression, and there are precedents for the article with the nomen regens. "The one to (or with) the other" means: according as the kingdoms of the north stand in relation to one another, far or near. - After the mention of all the kings and peoples on whom the king of Babylon is to execute judgment, it is said that he himself must at last drink the cup of wrath. שׁשׁך is, according to Jer 51:41, a name for Babylon, as Jerome states, presumably on the authority of his Jewish teacher, who followed the tradition. The name is formed acc. to the Canon Atbash, in virtue of which the letters of the alphabet were put one for the other in the inverse order (ת for א, שׁ for ב, etc.); thus שׁ would correspond to ב and כ to ל. Cf. Buxtorf, Lex. talm. s.v. אתבשׁ and de abbreviaturis hebr. p. 41. A like example is found in Jer 51:1, where כּשׂדּים is represented by לב קמי yb d. The assertion of Gesen. that this way of playing with words was not then in use, is groundless, as it also Hitz.'s, when he says it appeared first during the exile, and is consequently none of Jeremiah’s work. It is also erroneous when many comm. remark, that Jeremiah made use of the mysterious name from the fear of weakening the impression of terror which the name of Babylon ought to make on their minds. These assumptions are refuted by Jer 25:12, where there is threatening of the punishment of spoliation made against the king of Babylon and the land of the Chaldeans; and by Jer 51:41, where alongside of Sheshach we find in parallelism Babylon. The Atbash is, both originally and in the present case, no mere playing with words, but a transposition of the letters so as to gain a significant meaning, as may plainly be seen in the transposition to לב , Jer 51:1. This is the case with Sheshach also, which would be a contraction of שׁכשׁך (see Ew. §158, c), from שׁכך, to sink (of the water, Gen 8:1), to crouch (of the bird-catcher, Jer 5:26). The sig. is therefore a sinking down, so that the threatening, Jer 51:64 : Babel shall sink and not rise again, constitutes a commentary on the name; cf. Hgstb. Christ. iii. p. 377. The name does not sig. humiliation, in support of which Graf has recourse partly to שׁחה, partly to the Arabic usage. For other arbitrary interpretations, see in Ges. thes. p. 1486. ^{▼▼As has been done with the whole or with parts of Jer 25:12-14, so too the last clause of Jer 25:26 is pronounced by Ew., Hitz., and Graf to be spurious, a gloss that had ultimately found its way into the text. This is affirmed because the clause is wanting in the lxx, and because the prophet could not fitly threaten Babylon along with the other nations (Hitz.); or because "the specification of a single kingdom seems very much out of place, after the enumeration of the countries that are to drink the cup of wrath has been concluded by the preceding comprehensive intimation, 'all the kingdoms of the earth' " (Gr.). Both reasons are valueless. By "shall drink after them" Babylon is sufficiently distinguished from the other kings and countries mentioned, and the reason is given why Babylon is not put on the same footing with them, but is to be made to drink after them.} Jer 25:27-29

From Jer 25:27 onwards the commission from God (Jer 25:15.) is still more completely communicated to Jeremiah, so that the record of its fulfilment (Jer 25:17-26), together with the enumeration of the various peoples, is to be regarded as an explanatory parenthesis. These might the less unsuitably be inserted after Jer 25:16, inasmuch as what there is further of the divine command in Jer 25:27-29 is, if we examine its substance, little else than an enforcement of the command. The prophet is not merely to declare to them what is the meaning of this drinking of wrath (Hitz.), but is to tell them that they are to drink the cup of wrath to the bottom, so that they shall fall for drunkenness and not be able to stand again (Jer 25:27); and that they must drink, because when once Jahveh has begun judgment on His own people, He is determined not to spare any other people. קיוּ from קיה = קוא serves to strengthen the שׁכרוּ; in the second hemistich the figurative statement passes into the real, as at Jer 25:16. In Jer 25:28 שׁתו תשׁתּוּ is a peremptory command; ye shall = must drink. Jer 25:29 gives the reason; since God spares not His own people, then the heathen people need not count on immunity. "And ye think to go unpunished" is a question of surprise. Judgment is to be extended over all the inhabitants of the earth.

As to the fulfilment of this prophecy, see detail sin the exposition of the oracles against the nations, Jer 46-51. Hence it appears that most of the nations here mentioned were subject to Nebuchadnezzar. Only of Elam is no express mention there made; and as to Media, Jeremiah has given no special prophecy. As to both these peoples, it is very questionable whether Nebuchadnezzar ever subdued them. For more on this, see on Jer 49:34-39. Although it is said in Jer 25:9 of the present chapter and in Jer 27:5. that God has given all peoples, all the lands of the earth, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, yet it does not follow thence that Nebuchadnezzar really conquered all. The meaning of the prophetic announcement is simply that the king of Babylon will obtain dominion over the world for the coming period, and that when his time is run, he too must fall beneath the judgment. The judgment executed by Nebuchadnezzar on the nations is the beginning of that upon the whole earth, before which, in course of time, all inhabitants of the earth fall, even those whom Nebuchadnezzar’s sword has not reached. In the beginning of the Chaldean judgment the prophet sees the beginning of judgment upon the whole earth.