Yeremia 25:15-18

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 

Yeremia 25:27

25:27 Then the Lord said to me, ¹²  “Tell them that the Lord God of Israel who rules over all ¹³  says, ¹⁴  ‘Drink this cup ¹⁵  until you get drunk and vomit. Drink until you fall down and can’t get up. ¹⁶  For I will send wars sweeping through you.’ ¹⁷ 

Yeremia 51:7

51:7 Babylonia had been a gold cup in the Lord’s hand.

She had made the whole world drunk.

The nations had drunk from the wine of her wrath. ¹⁸ 

So they have all gone mad. ¹⁹ 

Mazmur 60:3

60:3 You have made your people experience hard times; ²⁰ 

you have made us drink intoxicating wine. ²¹ 

Mazmur 75:8

75:8 For the Lord holds in his hand a cup full

of foaming wine mixed with spices, ²² 

and pours it out. ²³ 

Surely all the wicked of the earth

will slurp it up and drink it to its very last drop.” ²⁴ 

Yesaya 29:9

God’s People are Spiritually Insensitive

29:9 You will be shocked and amazed! ²⁵ 

You are totally blind! ²⁶ 

They are drunk, ²⁷  but not because of wine;

they stagger, ²⁸  but not because of beer.

Yesaya 49:26

49:26 I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh;

they will get drunk on their own blood, as if it were wine. ²⁹ 

Then all humankind ³⁰  will recognize that

I am the Lord, your deliverer,

your protector, ³¹  the powerful ruler of Jacob.” ³² 

Yesaya 51:17

51:17 Wake up! Wake up!

Get up, O Jerusalem!

You drank from the cup the Lord passed to you,

which was full of his anger! ³³ 

You drained dry

the goblet full of intoxicating wine. ³⁴ 

Yesaya 51:21

51:21 So listen to this, oppressed one,

who is drunk, but not from wine!

Yesaya 63:6

63:6 I trampled nations in my anger,

I made them drunk ³⁵  in my rage,

I splashed their blood on the ground.” ³⁶ 

Habakuk 2:16

2:16 But you will become drunk ³⁷  with shame, not majesty. ³⁸ 

Now it is your turn to drink and expose your uncircumcised foreskin! ³⁹ 

The cup of wine in the Lord’s right hand ⁴⁰  is coming to you,

and disgrace will replace your majestic glory!

[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).

[25:27]  ¹² tn The words “Then the Lord said to me” are not in the text. They are supplied in the translation for clarity, to connect this part of the narrative with vv. 15, 17 after the long intervening list of nations who were to drink the cup of God’s wrath in judgment.

[25:27]  ¹³ tn Heb “Yahweh of armies, the God of Israel.”

[25:27]  sn See the study notes on 2:19 and 7:3 for explanation of this extended title.

[25:27]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “Tell them, ‘Thus says the Lord….’” The translation is intended to eliminate one level of imbedded quotation marks to help avoid confusion.

[25:27]  ¹⁵ tn The words “this cup” are not in the text but are implicit to the metaphor and the context. They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[25:27]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Drink, and get drunk, and vomit and fall down and don’t get up.” The imperatives following drink are not parallel actions but consequent actions. For the use of the imperative plus the conjunctive “and” to indicate consequent action, even intention see GKC 324-25 §110.f and compare usage in 1 Kgs 22:12; Prov 3:3b-4a.

[25:27]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “because of the sword that I will send among you.” See the notes on 2:16 for explanation.

[51:7]  ¹⁸ tn The words “of her wrath” are not in the Hebrew text but are supplied in the translation to help those readers who are not familiar with the figure of the “cup of the Lord’s wrath.”

[51:7]  sn The figure of the cup of the Lord’s wrath invoked in Jer 25:15-29 is invoked again here and Babylon is identified as the agent through which the wrath of the Lord is visited on the other nations. See the study note on 25:15 for explanation and further references.

[51:7]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “upon the grounds of such conditions the nations have gone mad.”

[60:3]  ²⁰ tn Heb “you have caused your people to see [what is] hard.”

[60:3]  ²¹ tn Heb “wine of staggering,” that is, intoxicating wine that makes one stagger in drunkenness. Intoxicating wine is here an image of divine judgment that makes its victims stagger like drunkards. See Isa 51:17-23.

[75:8]  ²² tn Heb “for a cup [is] in the hand of the Lord, and wine foams, it is full of a spiced drink.” The noun מֶסֶךְ (mesekh) refers to a “mixture” of wine and spices.

[75:8]  ²³ tn Heb “and he pours out from this.”

[75:8]  ²⁴ tn Heb “surely its dregs they slurp up and drink, all the wicked of the earth.”

[75:8]  sn The psalmist pictures God as forcing the wicked to gulp down an intoxicating drink that will leave them stunned and vulnerable. Divine judgment is also depicted this way in Ps 60:3; Isa 51:17-23; and Hab 2:16.

[29:9]  ²⁵ tn The form הִתְמַהְמְהוּ (hitmahmÿhu) is a Hitpalpel imperative from מָהַהּ (mahah, “hesitate”). If it is retained, one might translate “halt and be amazed.” The translation assumes an emendation to הִתַּמְּהוּ (hittammÿhu), a Hitpael imperative from תָּמַה (tamah, “be amazed”). In this case, the text, like Hab 1:5, combines the Hitpael and Qal imperatival forms of תָּמַה (tamah). A literal translation might be “Shock yourselves and be shocked!” The repetition of sound draws attention to the statement. The imperatives here have the force of an emphatic assertion. On this use of the imperative in Hebrew, see GKC 324 §110.c and IBHS 572 §34.4c.

[29:9]  ²⁶ tn Heb “Blind yourselves and be blind!” The Hitpalpel and Qal imperatival forms of שָׁעַע (sha’a’, “be blind”) are combined to draw attention to the statement. The imperatives have the force of an emphatic assertion.

[29:9]  ²⁷ tc Some prefer to emend the perfect form of the verb to an imperative (e.g., NAB, NCV, NRSV), since the people are addressed in the immediately preceding and following contexts.

[29:9]  ²⁸ tc Some prefer to emend the perfect form of the verb to an imperative (e.g., NAB, NCV, NRSV), since the people are addressed in the immediately preceding and following contexts.

[49:26]  ²⁹ sn Verse 26a depicts siege warfare and bloody defeat. The besieged enemy will be so starved they will their own flesh. The bloodstained bodies lying on the blood-soaked battle site will look as if they collapsed in drunkenness.

[49:26]  ³⁰ tn Heb “flesh” (so KJV, NASB).

[49:26]  ³¹ tn Heb “your redeemer.” See the note at 41:14.

[49:26]  ³² tn Heb “the powerful [one] of Jacob.” See 1:24.

[51:17]  ³³ tn Heb “[you] who have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of his anger.”

[51:17]  ³⁴ tn Heb “the goblet, the cup [that causes] staggering, you drank, you drained.”

[63:6]  ³⁵ sn See Isa 49:26 and 51:23 for similar imagery.

[63:6]  ³⁶ tn Heb “and I brought down to the ground their juice.” “Juice” refers to their blood (see v. 3).

[2:16]  ³⁷ tn Heb “are filled.” The translation assumes the verbal form is a perfect of certitude, emphasizing the certainty of Babylon’s coming judgment, which will reduce the majestic empire to shame and humiliation.

[2:16]  ³⁸ tn Or “glory.”

[2:16]  ³⁹ tc Heb “drink, even you, and show the foreskin.” Instead of הֵעָרֵל (he’arel, “show the foreskin”) one of the Dead Sea scrolls has הֵרָעֵל (hera’el, “stumble”). This reading also has support from several ancient versions and is followed by the NEB (“you too shall drink until you stagger”) and NRSV (“Drink, you yourself, and stagger”). For a defense of the Hebrew text, see P. D. Miller, Jr., Sin and Judgment in the Prophets, 63-64.

[2:16]  ⁴⁰ sn The Lord’s right hand represents his military power. He will force the Babylonians to experience the same humiliating defeat they inflicted on others.