Jeremiah 25: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

In the fourth year of King Jehoiakim, Jeremiah tells Judah that for twenty-three years he and the other prophets have warned them and they have not listened, so God will bring Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon and the peoples of the north against the land; the nations will serve Babylon seventy years, and after that God will punish Babylon itself. God then hands Jeremiah a cup filled with the wine of his anger and sends him to make a long list of named nations drink from it, beginning with Jerusalem and Judah and ending with the king of Sheshach. The chapter closes with a picture of the LORD roaring against everyone who lives on the earth, and with the shepherds, the leaders of the people, told to wail because they cannot escape.

Claim by Claim

1. 25:1
   • A word came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah.
   • The word came in the fourth year of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah.
   • That fourth year was the first year of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon.
2. 25:2
   • Jeremiah the prophet spoke this word to all the people of Judah.
   • Jeremiah the prophet spoke this word to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
3. 25:3
   • Jeremiah said the word of the LORD had come to him from the thirteenth year of Josiah son of Amon, king of Judah, until that day.
   • Jeremiah said that span was twenty-three years.
   • Jeremiah said he had spoken to them persistently, rising early to speak.
   • Jeremiah said they had not listened.
4. 25:4
   • The LORD sent to them all his servants the prophets.
   • The LORD sent the prophets persistently, rising early to send them.
   • They did not listen.
   • They did not incline their ear to hear.
5. 25:5
   • The prophets said: turn back, each man, from his evil way and from the evil of your deeds.
   • The prophets said: dwell on the land the LORD gave to you and to your fathers.
   • The LORD gave that land forever and ever.
6. 25:6
   • The prophets said: do not go after other gods to serve them.
   • The prophets said: do not bow down to other gods.
   • The prophets said: do not provoke me to anger with the work of your hands.
   • The LORD said he would then do them no harm.
7. 25:7
   • The LORD says they did not listen to him.
   • The LORD says they provoked him to anger with the work of their hands.
   • The LORD says this was to their own harm.
8. 25:8
   • The LORD of hosts speaks because they have not heard his words.
9. 25:9
   • The LORD says he is sending for and taking all the families of the north.
   • The LORD says he is sending for Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon.
   • The LORD calls Nebuchadrezzar his servant.
   • The LORD will bring them against this land and against its inhabitants.
   • The LORD will bring them against all the surrounding nations.
   • The LORD will devote them to destruction.
   • The LORD will make them an object of horror, of hissing, and everlasting ruins.
10. 25:10
    • The LORD will destroy from among them the sound of joy.
    • The LORD will destroy from among them the sound of gladness.
    • The LORD will destroy from among them the voice of the bridegroom.
    • The LORD will destroy from among them the voice of the bride.
    • The LORD will destroy from among them the sound of the millstones.
    • The LORD will destroy from among them the light of the lamp.
11. 25:11
    • This whole land will become a ruin and an object of horror.
    • These nations will serve the king of Babylon seventy years.
12. 25:12
    • When the seventy years are completed, the LORD will punish the king of Babylon and that nation for their iniquity.
    • The LORD will also punish the land of the Chaldeans.
    • The LORD will make it everlasting desolations.
13. 25:13
    • The LORD will bring upon that land all the words he has spoken against it.
    • The LORD will bring upon that land all that is written in this book.
    • Jeremiah prophesied this book against all the nations.
14. 25:14
    • Many nations and great kings will make slaves of them also.
    • The LORD will repay them according to their deeds and according to the work of their hands.
15. 25:15
    • The LORD, the God of Israel, spoke to Jeremiah.
    • The LORD told Jeremiah to take the cup of the wine of wrath from his hand.
    • The LORD told Jeremiah to make all the nations to whom he sends him drink it.
16. 25:16
    • The nations will drink.
    • The nations will stagger.
    • The nations will act like madmen.
    • This is because of the sword the LORD is sending among them.
17. 25:17
    • Jeremiah took the cup from the LORD's hand.
    • Jeremiah made all the nations drink, those to whom the LORD had sent him.
18. 25:18
    • Jeremiah made Jerusalem and the cities of Judah drink.
    • Jeremiah made the kings of Judah and its officials drink.
    • The purpose was to make them a ruin, an object of horror, a hissing, and a curse.
    • They are so at this day.
19. 25:19
    • Jeremiah made Pharaoh king of Egypt drink.
    • Jeremiah made Pharaoh's servants and his officials drink.
    • Jeremiah made all Pharaoh's people drink.
20. 25:20
    • Jeremiah made all the mixed people drink.
    • Jeremiah made all the kings of the land of Uz drink.
    • Jeremiah made all the kings of the land of the Philistines drink.
    • This included Ashkelon, Gaza, and Ekron.
    • This included the remnant of Ashdod.
21. 25:21
    • Jeremiah made Edom drink.
    • Jeremiah made Moab drink.
    • Jeremiah made the sons of Ammon drink.
22. 25:22
    • Jeremiah made all the kings of Tyre drink.
    • Jeremiah made all the kings of Sidon drink.
    • Jeremiah made the kings of the coastland beyond the sea drink.
23. 25:23
    • Jeremiah made Dedan, Tema, and Buz drink.
    • Jeremiah made drink all those who clip the corners of their hair, which can also be read as all those in the farthest corners.
24. 25:24
    • Jeremiah made all the kings of Arabia drink.
    • Jeremiah made all the kings of the mixed people who dwell in the desert drink.
25. 25:25
    • Jeremiah made all the kings of Zimri drink.
    • Jeremiah made all the kings of Elam drink.
    • Jeremiah made all the kings of Media drink.
26. 25:26
    • Jeremiah made all the kings of the north drink, both near and far, one after another.
    • Jeremiah made all the kingdoms of the world on the face of the earth drink.
    • The king of Sheshach will drink after them.
27. 25:27
    • Jeremiah is to say to them what the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, says.
    • The LORD commands them to drink and to get drunk.
    • The LORD commands them to vomit.
    • The LORD commands them to fall and not rise again.
    • This is because of the sword the LORD is sending among them.
28. 25:28
    • If they refuse to take the cup from Jeremiah's hand to drink, Jeremiah is to speak to them.
    • Jeremiah is to say the LORD of hosts declares that they shall certainly drink.
29. 25:29
    • The LORD is beginning to bring disaster on the city that is called by his name.
    • The LORD asks whether they should go entirely unpunished.
    • The LORD says they will not go unpunished.
    • The LORD is calling for a sword against all the inhabitants of the earth.
    • This is the declaration of the LORD of hosts.
30. 25:30
    • Jeremiah is to prophesy all these words against them.
    • The LORD will roar from on high.
    • The LORD will give his voice from his holy dwelling.
    • The LORD will roar mightily over his pasture.
    • The LORD will give a shout like those who tread grapes, against all the inhabitants of the earth.
31. 25:31
    • A tumult will come to the end of the earth.
    • The LORD has a dispute with the nations.
    • The LORD enters into judgment with all flesh.
    • The LORD gives the wicked to the sword.
    • This is the declaration of the LORD.
32. 25:32
    • The LORD of hosts says disaster is going out from nation to nation.
    • A great tempest is being stirred up from the farthest parts of the earth.
33. 25:33
    • On that day the slain of the LORD will lie from one end of the earth to the other.
    • They will not be lamented.
    • They will not be gathered.
    • They will not be buried.
    • They will be dung on the surface of the ground.
34. 25:34
    • The shepherds are commanded to wail and cry out.
    • The leaders of the flock are commanded to roll themselves in the ashes.
    • Their days for slaughter are fulfilled.
    • Their scatterings are fulfilled.
    • They will fall like a precious vessel.
35. 25:35
    • Flight will perish from the shepherds.
    • Escape will perish from the leaders of the flock.
36. 25:36
    • There is a sound of the crying of the shepherds.
    • There is a wailing of the leaders of the flock.
    • The LORD is destroying their pasture.
37. 25:37
    • The peaceful pastures are silenced.
    • This is because of the fierce anger of the LORD.
38. 25:38
    • He has left his lair like a lion.
    • Their land has become an object of horror.
    • This is because of the fierceness of the oppressor.
    • This is because of his fierce anger.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

25:1

The fourth year of Jehoiakim was around 605 BC, the year Babylon defeated Egypt at Carchemish and became the dominant power in the region. "Nebuchadrezzar" is Jeremiah's usual spelling of the name; it is closer to the Babylonian original than the more familiar "Nebuchadnezzar," and both refer to the same king.

25:2

Jerusalem was the most important city in Judah. God's temple, his special house, was there. A prophet is someone who tells people what God says.

25:3

The thirteenth year of Josiah was around 627 BC, when Jeremiah first began to prophesy. Where the King James has "rising early and speaking," the Hebrew is an idiom for doing something persistently and urgently, from first light onward; it does not refer to any particular time of day.

25:5

"Your fathers" means grandparents and great-grandparents from long ago.

25:6

"The works of your hands" is a standard Hebrew expression for idols, images physically manufactured by their worshipers. It is not a general phrase for deeds or behavior.

25:8

"The LORD of hosts," rendered here "the LORD of Armies," translates a title meaning the LORD who commands the armies, variously understood as Israel's armies, the heavenly bodies, or heavenly beings. It is a title of overwhelming military command.

25:9

"My servant" is a title of office, meaning an agent commissioned to carry out a task. It is startling here because it is normally used of prophets, of Moses, and of kings of Israel, and is applied to a foreign conqueror. "Something people hiss at" refers to a real gesture: passers-by would whistle or hiss through the teeth at a ruined site, a sound of shock and derision. The verb behind "completely destroy" is the term for placing something under an irrevocable ban, devoting it to destruction so that none of it may be kept.

25:10

Millstones grinding grain and a lamp burning were the ordinary background sounds and sights of an inhabited house, grain was ground daily by hand, and a small oil lamp was left alight through the night. Their absence is a picture of total emptiness, not of poverty.

25:11

Seventy years is roughly the span from Babylon's rise under Nebuchadrezzar to the Persian conquest of Babylon, and it also functions as a round figure for a full lifetime, meaning that no one who saw the disaster would live to see it undone.

25:12

The Chaldeans were a people of southern Mesopotamia whose dynasty ruled the Babylonian empire in this period; in Jeremiah "Chaldean" and "Babylonian" are used interchangeably.

25:13

"This book" means a scroll, a written collection of Jeremiah's spoken oracles. Jeremiah 36 describes such a scroll being dictated and written down in this same period.

25:14

The King James phrase "shall serve themselves of them" is old English for "shall make servants of them." The point is a reversal: the empire that enslaved everyone else ends up enslaved in its turn.

25:15

The cup handed round for everyone to drink is a recurring image in the Hebrew prophets. The picture is of a host at a feast forcing a cup on his guests one after another, and of drunkenness as helplessness, staggering, vomiting, unable to stand or defend oneself.

25:16

"The sword" here stands for war in general, not a single weapon or a duel. Where the King James says God will send a sword among the nations, it means armies, sieges and killing.

25:18

"A name used in curses" describes a real speech habit: a place so notoriously ruined that people invoke it when cursing, as in "may you end up like that place." The comment "as they are today" indicates that this section was written down, or added to, after the destruction it describes.

25:19

"Pharaoh" is a title, not a personal name, in the same way "Caesar" or "Tsar" is. It comes from an Egyptian phrase meaning "great house," originally the palace and then the man who lived in it.

25:20

"People of mixed background" translates a Hebrew word for mixed foreign populations living among a people, variously understood as resident foreigners, mercenary troops, or people of mixed descent. The Philistines occupied the coastal plain southwest of Judah and had been Israel's neighbors and rivals for centuries; Ashkelon, Ekron and Ashdod were among their principal cities. "Azzah" is the King James spelling of Gaza. "The people left in Ashdod" refers to survivors of the city's earlier devastation by Egypt and Assyria.

25:21

Edom, Moab and Ammon were kingdoms immediately east and southeast of Judah, across the Jordan and the Dead Sea. They were closely related to Israel in language and origin, and were long-standing rivals.

25:22

Tyrus and Zidon are the King James spellings of Tyre and Sidon, the two great Phoenician seaports on the coast of what is now Lebanon. "The coastlands across the sea" translates a word meaning islands or shores; it refers to the Phoenician trading colonies and coastal territories out across the Mediterranean.

25:23

Dedan, Tema and Buz were oases and tribal territories in the northern Arabian desert, on the caravan routes. The King James "all that are in the utmost corners" takes the Hebrew as a geographical phrase; the words more likely describe a distinctive Arabian custom of cutting the hair short at the temples, which Israelite law forbade. Both readings are defensible and the Hebrew is genuinely uncertain.

25:25

Elam lay east of Babylon and Media northeast of it, both in what is now Iran. Zimri is otherwise unknown; some take it as a place name now lost, others as a coded spelling of another name, on the pattern of Sheshach in verse 26.

25:26

Sheshach is a coded spelling of Babel, Babylon. The code, called atbash, swaps the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet for the last, the second for the second-to-last, and so on. Whether it was used for secrecy or as a rhetorical flourish is unknown; the effect is that the list of nations ends by naming the empire that has just been made to punish the rest.

25:29

"The city that is called by my name" means Jerusalem, which held the temple; the phrase indicates ownership, as a name stamped on property does. The argument runs from greater to lesser: if the city with the strongest claim to protection is not spared, no other place can expect to be.

25:30

Grape-treading was done by workers stamping in a vat, who shouted rhythmically as they worked. The image joins two things at once: a loud, exultant cry, and the crushing that produces red juice.

25:31

The Hebrew here uses courtroom vocabulary. The King James "hath a controversy" and "will plead" mean bringing a legal charge and conducting a case, not arguing or begging.

25:33

In this culture, to be left unburied and unmourned was the ultimate degradation, worse than death itself; funeral rites and a grave were owed even to enemies. Bodies scattered like dung on a field is a stock prophetic image for a defeat so total that no one is left to bury the dead.

25:34

"Shepherds" is standard ancient Near Eastern language for rulers and their officials, not for men who keep sheep; "leaders of the flock" means the same. Rolling in ashes or dust was a public mourning gesture, along with tearing one's clothes and wearing sackcloth. The "fine jar" is expensive pottery, valued and unmendable once dropped.

25:38

"Covert" means a lion's lair, a thicket or den it leaves when it goes out to hunt. Who the lion is here is left open: the sentence can be read as the LORD emerging to attack, or as a description of the conqueror. "The cruelty of the one who crushes them" follows one reading of the Hebrew; other manuscripts and ancient versions read "the sword of the oppressor," a difference of one very similar-looking word.