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The Cup of Judgment on the Nations. 15 [a]For thus said the Lord, the God of Israel, to me: Take this cup of the wine of wrath[b] from my hand and have all the nations to whom I will send you drink it.(A) 16 They shall drink, and retch, and go mad, because of the sword I will send among them.(B) 17 I took the cup from the hand of the Lord and gave it as drink to all the nations to whom the Lord sent me: 18 to Jerusalem, the cities of Judah, its kings and princes, to make them a ruin and a waste, an object of hissing and cursing, as they are today; 19 to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and his servants, princes, all his people 20 and those of mixed ancestry; all the kings of the land of Uz;[c] all the kings of the land of the Philistines: Ashkelon, Gaza, Ekron, and the remnant of Ashdod; 21 Edom, Moab, and the Ammonites; 22 all the kings of Tyre, of Sidon, and of the shores beyond the sea;[d] 23 Dedan and Tema and Buz,[e] all the desert dwellers who shave their temples; 24 all the kings of Arabia; 25 all the kings of Zimri, of Elam, of the Medes; 26 all the kings of the north, near and far, one after the other; all the kingdoms upon the face of the earth and after them the king of Sheshach[f] shall drink.

27 Tell them: Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Drink! Get drunk and vomit! Fall, never to rise, before the sword that I will send among you!(C) 28 If they refuse to take the cup from your hand and drink, say to them: Thus says the Lord of hosts: You must drink!(D) 29 Now that I am inflicting evil on this city, called by my name, how can you possibly escape? You shall not escape! I am calling down the sword upon all the inhabitants of the earth—oracle of the Lord of hosts.

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Footnotes

  1. 25:15–17 Jeremiah is a prophet to the nations (cf. 1:5) as well as to his own people. All the nations mentioned here appear again in the more extensive collection of Jeremiah’s oracles against the nations in chaps. 46–51.
  2. 25:15 Cup…wrath: a metaphor for destruction that occurs often in the Old Testament (cf. Ps 11:6; 75:9; Hb 2:15–16; Ez 23:31–33, etc.).
  3. 25:20 Uz: the homeland of legendary Job, in Edomite or Arabian territory.
  4. 25:22 The shores beyond the sea: Phoenician commercial colonies located throughout the Mediterranean world.
  5. 25:23 Dedan and Tema and Buz: North Arabian tribes.
  6. 25:26 Sheshach: a contrived word from the Hebrew letters of Babylon.