Jeremiah 25
Jeremiah stops, for once, to fix the date exactly: the fourth year of Jehoiakim… that was the first year of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon (v. 1). The precision is the point - the long warning is over, the clock has run out, and the man who is about to march on Jerusalem is now named. Looking back, the prophet reckons up the years of his own labour: the three and twentieth year, the word of the LORD hath come unto me, and I have spoken unto you, rising early and speaking; but ye have not hearkened (v. 3). Twenty-three years of pleading, and behind him a long line of prophets sent before, rising early and sending them; but ye have not hearkened, nor inclined your ear to hear (v. 4). The message had never changed: turn from the evil way, and dwell in the land in peace. The answer had never changed either.3
So the sentence falls, and it carries a number. The families of the north will come; the land will become an astonishment, and an hissing; even the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride will be silenced (v. 10). And then: these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years (v. 11). The number is severe - long enough to bury a generation - but it is also a mercy, because it ends. When the seventy years are accomplished, the LORD will turn the same justice on Babylon itself (v. 12). The God who sends the rod is the God who will one day break it.
The last half of the chapter widens past Judah to the whole earth. The prophet is handed the wine cup of this fury and sent to make every nation drink it - Egypt, Edom, Moab, Tyre, Arabia, Elam, and at last all the kingdoms of the world, which are upon the face of the earth (v. 26). None may refuse: Ye shall certainly drink (v. 28). The chapter closes with the LORD roaring from on high like a lion over its prey, with a controversy with the nations, pleading with all flesh (vv. 30-31). It is a sobering vision of a God who will not let the world's evil go unanswered - and it raises, without yet resolving, the question every reader must carry: who could ever drink such a cup and live?2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Jeremiah 25:1-7Rising Early, and Ye Have Not Hearkened
1The word that came to Jeremiah concerning all the people of Judah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah king of Judah, that was the first year of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon; 2The which Jeremiah the prophet spake unto all the people of Judah, and to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, 3From the thirteenth year of Josiah the son of Amon king of Judah, even unto this day, that is the three and twentieth year, the word of the LORD hath come unto me, and I have spoken unto you, rising early and speaking; but ye have not hearkened. 4And the LORD hath sent unto you all his servants the prophets, rising early and sending them; but ye have not hearkened, nor inclined your ear to hear. 5They said, Turn ye again now every one from his evil way, and from the evil of your doings, and dwell in the land that the LORD hath given unto you and to your fathers for ever and ever: 6And go not after other gods to serve them, and to worship them, and provoke me not to anger with the works of your hands; and I will do you no hurt. 7Yet ye have not hearkened unto me, saith the LORD; that ye might provoke me to anger with the works of your hands to your own hurt.
Jeremiah does something here he rarely does: he gives the precise date. The fourth year of Jehoiakim… that was the first year of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon (v. 1). The two reigns are set side by side on purpose. Jehoiakim is the king who will burn the prophet's scroll a chapter later; Nebuchadrezzar is the man whose name has just become the most dangerous word in the world. To date the oracle by both is to say the hour has come - the warnings have run their course, and the instrument of judgment is now on the map. Then the prophet reckons up his own years: the three and twentieth year, the word of the LORD hath come unto me, and I have spoken unto you, rising early and speaking; but ye have not hearkened (v. 3). Twenty-three years. The phrase rising early and speaking is one of Jeremiah's most haunting; it pictures God like a householder up before dawn, eager, sending His word out again and again at the first light of every day. The tragedy is not that God was silent or slow. He was tireless. The failure was entirely on the other side - but ye have not hearkened.3
The prophet widens the frame beyond himself: And the LORD hath sent unto you all his servants the prophets, rising early and sending them; but ye have not hearkened, nor inclined your ear to hear (v. 4). Jeremiah is not the first voice they have ignored; he is the last in a long succession. God has been rising early for generations, sending prophet after prophet, and the refrain over each is the same. Notice how plain and gracious the actual message always was: Turn ye again now every one from his evil way… and dwell in the land that the LORD hath given unto you and to your fathers for ever and ever (v. 5). It was never a demand for the impossible. It was a call to come home, paired with a promise - turn, and stay in the land in peace. The single thing forbidden was the thing they kept reaching for: go not after other gods to serve them, and to worship them (v. 6). And the LORD's own desire is stated outright at the end of that verse: and I will do you no hurt. The God whom they imagined as eager to punish was in fact eager to spare. He warned for twenty-three years precisely so that He would not have to strike.
The seventh verse names the strange shape of the whole tragedy: Yet ye have not hearkened unto me, saith the LORD; that ye might provoke me to anger with the works of your hands to your own hurt (v. 7). Read that last clause slowly. They provoked God to their own hurt. The idols they made with their hands could not help them; they could only harm the hands that made them. There is a kind of sin that is, at bottom, self-wounding - a person reaching past the One who said I will do you no hurt in order to grasp the very things that will hurt them most. Twice in two verses the phrase the works of your hands sounds (vv. 6-7), and it cuts both ways: these were home-made gods, and they brought home-made ruin. The chapter is not the picture of a vengeful God ambushing an innocent people. It is the picture of a patient God, up before dawn for decades, watching a people insist on the path that wounds them - and finally, sorrowfully, letting the chosen path have its end.
Jeremiah 25:8-14Seventy Years - and Then Babylon
8Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Because ye have not heard my words, 9Behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, saith the LORD, and Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land, and against the inhabitants thereof, and against all these nations round about, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, and an hissing, and perpetual desolations. 10Moreover I will take from them the voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones, and the light of the candle. 11And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. 12And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith the LORD, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual desolations. 13And I will bring upon that land all my words which I have pronounced against it, even all that is written in this book, which Jeremiah hath prophesied against all the nations. 14For many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of them also: and I will recompense them according to their deeds, and according to the works of their own hands.
The sentence opens with a startling title: Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon, my servant (v. 9). The most feared pagan king of the age is called the LORD's servant. It is one of the boldest claims of sovereignty in the prophets. Babylon does not rise by its own might or by the strength of its gods; it is summoned, a tool taken up in the hand of the God of Israel to do a work of judgment. The armies that will pour down from the north are not outside God's reach - they are inside His purpose. This is a double-edged comfort. On the one hand, the catastrophe is not random; it is governed, measured, meaningful. On the other, calling Babylon my servant sets up the turn that is coming three verses later, for a servant is accountable to a master. Then comes the catalog of loss in verse 10, and it is devastating precisely because it is so ordinary: the voice of mirth… the voice of the bridegroom, and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones, and the light of the candle. Not palaces and armies but weddings, the daily grind of grain, the small lamp burning in a window at night. Judgment here is the silencing of normal life - the sounds a person never notices until they are gone.
Then the number lands, and the whole book turns on it: these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years (v. 11). Everything hangs on the precision of that word. It is not “a long time” or “until I relent” or “forever.” It is seventy years - a span you can write down and count toward. Severe, certainly: seventy years is long enough that most who march into exile as adults will die in a foreign land, and a generation not yet born will grow grey before the return. And yet the very fact that it has a number makes it bearable. A sentence with an end is not the same as abandonment. The exiles can hold a fixed term in their hands the way a prisoner holds a release date - dark, but not endless. This is the hinge between despair and hope in the chapter: judgment is real, named, and dated, but it is judgment with a horizon. The God who set the seventy years is the God who will, at their close, bring His people home.
The most important word in this section is the first one of verse 12: And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation… for their iniquity. The instrument is not the favourite. Babylon was called my servant, but Babylon is not therefore innocent - the cruelty with which it carried out the work is its own iniquity, and it will answer for it. I will recompense them according to their deeds, and according to the works of their own hands (v. 14) - the very phrase that fell on Judah in verse 7 now falls on Babylon. No nation is permanently the rod; no oppressor escapes the reckoning. For the exiles this is a quiet, fierce comfort: the empire that grinds them down is itself under sentence, on a clock it cannot see. God's justice is not partial to the strong. The same hand that disciplines His own people will, in its time, hold the proud destroyer to account - all that is written in this book, which Jeremiah hath prophesied against all the nations (v. 13).
Jeremiah 25:15-29The Wine Cup of This Fury
15For thus saith the LORD God of Israel unto me; Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it. 16And they shall drink, and be moved, and be mad, because of the sword that I will send among them. 17Then took I the cup at the LORD's hand, and made all the nations to drink, unto whom the LORD had sent me: 18To wit, Jerusalem, and the cities of Judah, and the kings thereof, and the princes thereof, to make them a desolation, an astonishment, an hissing, and a curse; as it is this day; 19Pharaoh king of Egypt, and his servants, and his princes, and all his people; 20And all the mingled people, and all the kings of the land of Uz, and all the kings of the land of the Philistines, and Ashkelon, and Azzah, and Ekron, and the remnant of Ashdod, 21Edom, and Moab, and the children of Ammon, 22And all the kings of Tyrus, and all the kings of Zidon, and the kings of the isles which are beyond the sea, 23Dedan, and Tema, and Buz, and all that are in the utmost corners, 24And all the kings of Arabia, and all the kings of the mingled people that dwell in the desert, 25And all the kings of Zimri, and all the kings of Elam, and all the kings of the Medes, 26And all the kings of the north, far and near, 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. 27Therefore thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Drink ye, and be drunken, and spue, and fall, and rise no more, because of the sword which I will send among you. 28And it shall be, if they refuse to take the cup at thine hand to drink, then shalt thou say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Ye shall certainly drink. 29For, lo, I begin to bring evil on the city which is called by my name, and should ye be utterly unpunished? Ye shall not be unpunished: for I will call for a sword upon all the inhabitants of the earth, saith the LORD of hosts.
The vision changes from words to an object, and the object is terrible: Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations… to drink it (v. 15). Throughout Scripture the cup is an image of what God apportions to a person - sometimes a cup of blessing that runs over, here a cup of wrath against sin, mixed and handed out by His own hand. To drink it is to receive the full measure of judgment a people has earned. And the effect is staggering and grotesque: they shall drink, and be moved, and be mad (v. 16); drink ye, and be drunken, and spue, and fall, and rise no more (v. 27). The nations are pictured as a hall of revelers who have drunk something that does not gladden but maddens - reeling, sick, collapsing, never to rise. It is the loss of all footing, all reason, all standing, under the weight of what they have brought on themselves. Then comes the obedient, awful line: Then took I the cup at the LORD's hand, and made all the nations to drink (v. 17). The prophet does not merely announce the wrath; he is made to carry it, kingdom by kingdom, like a man walking a poison from door to door. It is one of the heaviest commissions in the prophets - and it leaves a question hanging over the whole scene that the chapter cannot itself answer: is there anyone who could take this cup and not fall?
What follows is a roll call of doom that sweeps across the whole map (vv. 18-26), and the order of names matters. The list begins, shockingly, at home: Jerusalem, and the cities of Judah, and the kings thereof (v. 18). God's own people are first to drink. From there the cup travels outward in widening rings - Pharaoh king of Egypt and all his court; the old enemies near at hand, the Philistine cities, Edom, and Moab, and the children of Ammon; the trading powers of the coast, Tyrus and Zidon and the far isles; the desert tribes of Arabia; the distant eastern kingdoms of Elam and the Medes - until the catalog can no longer be itemized and simply opens to all the kingdoms of the world, which are upon the face of the earth (v. 26). The reach is total. No corner is too remote, no empire too strong, no people too obscure. And the list ends on a riddle: the king of Sheshach shall drink after them. “Sheshach” is a veiled name for Babylon, formed by a simple letter-cipher - the great destroyer hidden until last in the very list of those it helped destroy, and made to drink the same cup it had poured for everyone else. The instrument of wrath is, in the end, no exception to wrath.3
Two lines anchor the whole terrible passage in something other than arbitrary cruelty. First, the refusal is not allowed: if they refuse to take the cup at thine hand to drink, then shalt thou say unto them… Ye shall certainly drink (v. 28). The wrath of God against entrenched evil is not a threat that can be waved away by declining it; it is a reality, not a negotiation. Second, and more searching, is the principle in verse 29: For, lo, I begin to bring evil on the city which is called by my name, and should ye be utterly unpunished? Judgment begins at God's own house. The people who bore His name, who had His temple and His covenant, are not spared because of the privilege - they are held to a higher account precisely because of it. The logic is unanswerable: if the LORD will not overlook sin among the people closest to Him, how could the nations who never knew Him expect to be passed over? This same principle echoes forward in the New Testament - judgment must begin at the house of God (1 Pet. 4:17). Nearness to God is never a license; it is a deeper responsibility. The cup goes out to all the inhabitants of the earth, but it starts at the doorstep of the household of faith.
Jeremiah 25:30-38The LORD Shall Roar from on High
30Therefore prophesy thou against them all these words, and say unto them, The LORD shall roar from on high, and utter his voice from his holy habitation; he shall mightily roar upon his habitation; he shall give a shout, as they that tread the grapes, against all the inhabitants of the earth. 31A noise shall come even to the ends of the earth; for the LORD hath a controversy with the nations, he will plead with all flesh; he will give them that are wicked to the sword, saith the LORD. 32Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Behold, evil shall go forth from nation to nation, and a great whirlwind shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth. 33And the slain of the LORD shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth: they shall not be lamented, neither gathered, nor buried; they shall be dung upon the ground. 34Howl, ye shepherds, and cry; and wallow yourselves in the ashes, ye principal of the flock: for the days of your slaughter and of your dispersions are accomplished; and ye shall fall like a pleasant vessel. 35And the shepherds shall have no way to flee, nor the principal of the flock to escape. 36A voice of the cry of the shepherds, and an howling of the principal of the flock, shall be heard: for the LORD hath spoiled their pasture. 37And the peaceable habitations are cut down because of the fierce anger of the LORD. 38He hath forsaken his covert, as the lion: for their land is desolate because of the fierceness of the oppressor, and because of his fierce anger.
The chapter rises to its climax in a sound - a vast, terrifying sound: The LORD shall roar from on high, and utter his voice from his holy habitation; he shall mightily roar upon his habitation (v. 30). The image is the lion. All through the gentle earlier verses God was the householder rising early to plead; now He is the lion roaring over the prey, and the noise of it carries even to the ends of the earth (v. 31). Layered onto the roar is a second picture from the wine harvest: he shall give a shout, as they that tread the grapes (v. 30). It is a deliberate and grim echo of the cup - the same imagery of the winepress that runs through the prophets' visions of judgment, the shout of the treaders as the grapes are crushed. The God who handed the cup of fury to the nations is now Himself heard in the treading of it. This is the holy seriousness with which God regards the ruin of His world. He is not indifferent; He is not asleep. The evil that has gone unanswered for generations will not go unanswered forever - and when His voice finally breaks the silence, it shakes the whole earth.
Verse 31 names exactly what this roaring is: the LORD hath a controversy with the nations, he will plead with all flesh. The word controversy is a courtroom word - a legal dispute, a case being brought. And plead here does not mean to beg; it means to prosecute, to enter into judgment, to argue the case to its verdict. This reframes the whole violent scene. What looks like raw destruction is in fact a trial. God is not lashing out; He is bringing a long-standing case against the wickedness of all flesh, and the sentence falls only on them that are wicked. Then the imagery turns to a storm: a great whirlwind shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth (v. 32), and the dead lie unburied from one end of the earth even unto the other (v. 33) - the most desolate of all pictures, for to lie as dung upon the ground, unlamented and ungathered, was the ancient world's image of utter dishonour. The scope has gone fully global. This is no longer only about Judah and Babylon; it is a vision of the whole earth brought into the court of its Maker, and it presses the reader toward the great and final reckoning the prophets keep glimpsing on the horizon.
The final verses single out a particular group for lament: Howl, ye shepherds, and cry; and wallow yourselves in the ashes, ye principal of the flock (v. 34). In the prophets' language the shepherds are the leaders - the kings, princes, and rulers who were charged to guard and feed the people and instead scattered and devoured them. Now their day has come: the days of your slaughter and of your dispersions are accomplished; and ye shall fall like a pleasant vessel - like a fine clay jar dashed to pieces, beautiful one moment and worthless shards the next. There is nowhere to run: the shepherds shall have no way to flee, nor the principal of the flock to escape (v. 35). The same leaders who failed to protect the flock cannot now protect themselves. And the chapter ends on the lion image once more, but turned: He hath forsaken his covert, as the lion: for their land is desolate because of the fierceness of the oppressor, and because of his fierce anger (v. 38). The lair is abandoned, the land laid waste. It is a bleak ending - deliberately so. Jeremiah will not soften the horror of what unanswered sin finally brings. The chapter closes in the silence after the roar, leaving the reader longing for a shepherd who would not scatter the flock but lay down his life for it.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Jeremiah 25 with Rashi, Radak, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for shiv'im shanah (v. 11, the “seventy years” later counted by Daniel), for kos ha-chemah (v. 15, the “wine cup of this fury”), and for the riddling name Sheshach in verse 26.
- Jeremiah 25 ↔ Daniel 9 · 2 Chronicles 36 · Revelation 14Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Jeremiah 25 to the rest of Scripture - the seventy years of verse 11 read in Daniel's prayer (Dan. 9:2) and the Chronicler's record of their fulfillment (2 Chr. 36:21), and the cup of fury of verse 15 read beside the cup of wrath in the Psalms (Ps. 75:8) and the Revelation (Rev. 14:10).
- Jeremiah 25 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Jeremiah 25 - the dating in verse 1, the much-discussed “seventy years” of verse 11, the catalog of nations summoned to the cup in verses 18-26, and the atbash cipher behind the name “Sheshach” (Babylon) in verse 26.
Where this echoes in Scripture
Rising Early, and Ye Have Not Hearkened
- 2 Chronicles 36:15-16And the LORD God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes, and sending; because he had compassion... But they mocked the messengers of God.The same picture as verses 3-4 - God rising early to send prophet after prophet, out of compassion, to a people who would not hear.
- Jeremiah 7:25I have even sent unto you all my servants the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them.Jeremiah’s recurring refrain - the tireless sending of verse 4, God up before dawn with His word.
- Matthew 23:37O Jerusalem, Jerusalem... how often would I have gathered thy children together... and ye would not!The same grief as verses 3-7 - the longing of God to gather and spare, met by a people who would not.
- Isaiah 65:2I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good.The posture behind “rising early and speaking” (v. 3) - hands spread out all day toward those who would not turn.
- Jeremiah 18:11Return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good.The unchanging plea of verse 5 - turn from the evil way, and the threatened judgment need not fall.
Seventy Years - and Then Babylon
- Daniel 9:2I Daniel understood by books the number of the years... that he would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.The seventy years of verse 11 counted out by a later reader of this very book - proof that the number was an exact appointment.
- 2 Chronicles 36:21To fulfil the word of the LORD by the mouth of Jeremiah, until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths... to fulfil threescore and ten years.The fulfillment of verses 11-12 recorded - the seventy years kept to the term, then the land restored.
- Jeremiah 29:10That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return.The same seventy years (v. 11) read as a promise - a fixed term with a homecoming on the far side.
- Habakkuk 1:6For, lo, I raise up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, which shall march through the breadth of the land.The same sovereignty as verse 9 - God raising up Babylon as His instrument, even against His own people.
- Galatians 4:4But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son.The God who keeps the hour (v. 12) - the same precise governance that set the exile’s term set the time of the Son’s coming.
The Wine Cup of This Fury
- Matthew 26:39O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.The cup of fury of verse 15 taken up by Christ - He shrank from it, knew its contents, and chose it anyway.
- John 18:11The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?The cup the nations could not refuse (v. 28) - willingly drunk by the One who had no sin of His own.
- Isaiah 51:22Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling... thou shalt no more drink it again.The cup of verse 15 lifted from the believer’s hand - taken away because it was drunk by Another.
- Psalm 75:8For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup... and the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them.The same image as verses 15-16 - the cup of wrath in God’s hand, drained by the wicked.
- 1 Peter 4:17For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God.The principle of verse 29 carried forward - judgment begins with the people who bear God’s name.
The LORD Shall Roar from on High
- Amos 1:2The LORD will roar from Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the habitations of the shepherds shall mourn.The same image as verse 30 - the LORD roaring like a lion from His holy place against the nations.
- Joel 3:16The LORD also shall roar out of Zion... and the heavens and the earth shall shake: but the LORD will be the hope of his people.The roar of verse 30 paired with hope - the same voice that shakes the earth is the refuge of His own.
- John 10:11I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.The answer to the failed shepherds of verse 34 - the Shepherd who gathers the flock and lays down His life rather than fleeing.
- Revelation 5:5-6the Lion of the tribe of Juda... hath prevailed... and, lo... a Lamb as it had been slain.The lion of judgment (vv. 30, 38) and the Lamb that was slain - the one God who satisfied His own controversy in His own flesh.
- Ezekiel 34:2Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks?The charge behind the lament of verse 34 - leaders who fed themselves instead of the flock now called to account.