Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Jeremiah · About this commentary
The Cup of the Wine of Wrath
Jeremiah 25:15-38
15 For Yahweh, the God of Israel, says to me: “Take this cup of the wine of wrath from my hand, and cause all the nations to whom I send you to drink it. · WEB
A cup is carried around the whole known world and every nation drinks, and the first name on the list is Jerusalem.
The commission is theatrical and its logic is plain: take the cup from God's hand and make all the nations to whom you are sent drink it. Wine here is not pleasure but incapacity — they will reel back and forth and be insane — which is a description of what a nation looks like while an army moves through it. The image also carries the fact that nobody chooses their portion. A cup is handed over already poured.
The list that follows runs from Judah out to the edges of the known map: Egypt, the Philistine cities, Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre and Sidon, the Arabian tribes, Elam, the Medes, and the kings of the north far and near. What matters is not the geography but the first entry: Jerusalem, and the cities of Judah, with its kings and its princes. The cup begins at the temple's own city. The principle is stated outright a few verses later. If God is beginning at the city called by his name, no one else should expect to be passed over. Judgment starts where the knowledge was greatest.
The refusal is anticipated and dismissed. If they will not take the cup, they are to be told You shall surely drink, which removes the last thing a listener might have thought was theirs to decide. The last name on the list is given in a substitute form, and the book supplies the identification itself when the same word stands in parallel with Babylon at the end of the oracles against the nations Jeremiah 51:41. The empire that pours for everyone else is served last, and is served.
The closing verses change the sound. God roars from on high like a lion that has left its lair, and shouts like men treading grapes — the workers' rhythmic cry at the winepress, set against a vintage of blood. The reason given is judicial: Yahweh has a controversy with the nations. He will enter into judgment with all flesh. This is not a local deity punishing the neighbors of his people. It is a court with universal jurisdiction. The shepherds who thought themselves outside it are told to wallow in the dust, because there is nowhere to run.
settled What this mark means