Chapter 25
Here begins the 11th message, with the words "The word that came to Jeremiah..."
Another chronological fix here: 4th year of Jehoiakim, first year of Nebuchadnezzar. So...is this going backwards to before Chapter 24? That one was the second carrying away, and now we are back to Neb's first year as King? MSB has some specific dates to put on these years. In 24:1, he says the year was 597 BC. The 4th year of Jehoiakim was 605/604 BC. So we have gone back. First year of Nebuchadnezzar was 605 BC also.
Ahh...but read a little further...Jeremiah says he's been preaching to them God's warning for 23 years now, starting in 605 BC...or ending in 605 BC as the date of Chapter 25...and they have ignored God's warnings. Ok, honestly, even with MSB notes I am uncertain about when Chapter 25 was written. It should be easy, I'm just confused today. The message of 23 years is summarized here:
5 saying, 'Turn now, every one of you, from his evil way and evil deeds, and dwell upon the land that the LORD has given to you and your fathers from of old and forever. 6 Do not go after other gods to serve and worship them, or provoke me to anger with the work of your hands. Then I will do you no harm.' [Jer 25:5-6 ESV]
Three things:
1. Turn from evil.
2. Dwell in the land He's given them.
3. Don't serve other gods, made with your own hands.
(??? Is this rightly divided? Message may be more complex than three or four points.)
There is a long prophesy in vss 8-14, covering a long span of future history. It says some very specific things that should be verifiable in history. It says Nebuchadnezzar will conquer them. Not "someone" from kind of north of here, but a specific King. Those captured will serve Babylon 70 years. Not 69 or 71. After the 70 years, God will punish the king of Babylon AND that nation. This sentence, equating Babylon and Chaldea:
12 Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, declares the LORD, making the land an everlasting waste. [Jer 25:12 ESV]
When did this 70 years start, 587 or 597 BC? What happened in Babylon at the end of that time? Did the Medes conquer them? What was the result?
It is interesting that this "everlasting waste" would still be in effect today. Babylon was in modern day Iraq, south of Baghdad, on the river. Surely that place today is nothing but desert. But the reading gives the idea that in its day, this area was lush and green. That it got rain to grow crops and so on. God used to send rain there, but does so no longer. Wouldn't it be interesting to study passages like this in light of "Climate Change through the Ages", and see that in fact, it is God, and not man's CO2 emissions, that determines climate. Same would be true of the abundance Israel used to have, before God's chastening. There used to be much different wildlife here than there is now also.
2024 - This verse: 10 Moreover, I will banish from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the grinding of the millstones and the light of the lamp. [Jer 25:10 ESV]. Think of the Middle East. Of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Gaza. There is very little mirth and gladness and celebration of the future in those places. Expand it on out to Iraq, Iran, Syria, southern Turkey. I haven't seen any UN "Happiness Surveys" but my guess is that this is not really a great place to live. Bombs and missiles, armed militias "drafting" any young man they can find, no real peace within or without. Constant fear, short horizons, and so on. This is why things are the way they are in that part of the world. It is this curse that goes all the way back to Jeremiah.
vs 15 starts with "Thus the Lord, the God of Israel, said to me..." But this is a continuation of message 11, not a new message. Why?
These two verses are worth pasting entirely:
15 Thus the LORD, the God of Israel, said to me: "Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it. 16 They shall drink and stagger and be crazed because of the sword that I am sending among them." [Jer 25:15-16 ESV]
The wine of the wrath of God. I believe we see this phrase also in Revelation. In two places it turns out:
10 he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. [Rev 14:10 ESV] This verse continues a quote from the third angel as he tells what will happen to those who receive the mark of the beast.
19 The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell, and God remembered Babylon the great, to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath. [Rev 16:19 ESV]
This verse follows the pouring out of the 7th Bowl judgement, the one after which a voice from the Temple of heaven says "It is done". This is the end. The "great city" is divided into three parts. Babylon is mentioned.
It is more than a little possible that one or both of these verses are being prophesied by Jeremiah. Jeremiah takes that cup and does as God said. A long list of kings in various places - kings and countries mentioned by name. Looking at all these places, they are generally desert. They have very restricted agricultural resources. They are importers (net, in my opinion, I haven't looked it up) of food and goods, because they are all desolate in that part of the world, and cannot support themselves. Is this correct??? Amazing if it is...
2025 - General thought...
This cup of wine symbolizes the wrath of God. The symbolism is that too much wine makes one unable to function. The mind shuts down and the body shuts down. You can't walk, you can't think, you can't plan the next five minutes in your drunkenness. So God first makes the defending nations drunk with the wine of his wrath so that nothing they do against the coming invaders will be of a caliber that even slows them down. Think of playing chess against a grand master when you are drunk. You are defenseless, incapable of even making a showing much less earning the opponents respect.
I think the wine poured out in Revelation may be just like that. Those left on earth at that time just won't be able to mount a noticeable defense against what is happening to the whole earth.
And then the summary verse is here:
26 all the kings of the north, far and near, one after another, and all the kingdoms of the world that are on the face of the earth. And after them the king of Babylon shall drink. [Jer 25:26 ESV]
Hard to see how this is about anything but Rev. 16:19, and the ultimate judgement of the earth.
Then, as seems to be a bit of a pattern in this book, once the narrative is done, the same prophecy appears in prose/poetry. I may be wrong about this, and you'd need to see it written in the original language to really know, but it seems Jeremiah often records prophecy in two formats. Actually...it might be more accurate to say that the prophecy is first given in scope and practice, generalized, interpreted even, and then following that are the actual words - word for word - that God told Jeremiah to say. Need to go back and look at this and see if it is so...
2022 - I think perhaps the key verse to all this is here:
29 For behold, I begin to work disaster at the city that is called by my name, and shall you go unpunished? You shall not go unpunished, for I am summoning a sword against all the inhabitants of the earth, declares the LORD of hosts.' [Jer 25:29 ESV]. Could we interpret this to mean that since God is at the end of His great patience with Israel, and is going to pour out his wrath on them, those who do not even know him are also overdue for wrath? This seems to be saying that "the whole known world" of Jeremiah's time is about to receive a divine reckoning for what they have become. This is not Noah's flood, and this is not Revelation, it is less encompassing than these events, but it is an end of the "road of progression" that humanity has been on until this time. God decides that there is no reason to preserve any part of the 'cultural direction" of these nations. Note that even Media - which will conquer Babylon - is to receive this wrath. And that seems to be the last of it. Once wrath is poured out on the Medes - and I think by extension the Persians - then this "cup of the wine of wrath" will be emptied, and things begin moving toward a new dispensation - the age of the Gentiles. And the marker of the very end of this cup is the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. From 70 AD the whole world is part of God's plan. As we see, man once again deteriorates and becomes more and more sinful, less and less concerned with his Maker, nations rise and fall - as they always do, and we are moving headlong toward the seventh bowl judgment and the end of the history of man.
2022 - Where it switches from narrative to "poetry" in vs 30 seems to be the break between the prophesied events of the next 70 years plus and the events of final judgment of the whole earth as in Revelation. The break is really pretty clear.
2023 - This verse:
30 "You, therefore, shall prophesy against them all these words, and say to them: "'The LORD will roar from on high, and from his holy habitation utter his voice; he will roar mightily against his fold, and shout, like those who tread grapes, against all the inhabitants of the earth. [Jer 25:30 ESV]. Is this where "trampling out the vintage" came from? What is this shouting about? Found this in Bible Hub, Cambridge Bible for schools and colleges: "a shout] lit. a vintage shout, the cry with which the treaders of the grapes used to cheer their toil. So Jehovah will trample down the nations. Cp. Jeremiah 48:33, where see note; Isaiah 16:10. Here, however, it is the battle shout. Cp. Jeremiah 51:14. So it seems that those mashing the grapes shouted at some point, or continuously, as they went about their less than invigorating task. I can't tell from this if they shouted the whole time, only at the beginning or only at the end. We get this same metaphor in Revelation. This is from Bible Hub, and the Keil and Delitsch Commentary on the OT: the loud cry with which those that tread grapes keep time in the alternate raising and thrusting of the feet. Ew. is accordingly correct, though far from happy, in rendering the word "tramping-song;" see on Isaiah 16:9. As to the figure of the treader of grapes, cf. Isaiah 63:3.
I think the idea we are to come away with is that God will set about this task of pouring out his wrath as the wine treaders tackle theirs. It is a long, laboring, monotonous but necessary task that cannot be accomplished in five minutes. It is laborious and long. Like those who tramp the grapes into wine for hours or days at a time, God will vent his wrath on his flock for an extended period of time, shouting to keep himself going, though the task is not enjoyable for Him. I think this last one confirms the "trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored" reference. Who knew that phrase in the song came from Jeremiah 25? And what does it say about the study habits of the person who wrote the song!? Here are the verses in Revelation:
19 So the angel swung his sickle across the earth and gathered the grape harvest of the earth and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.
20 And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress, as high as a horse's bridle, for 1,600 stadia. [Rev 14:19-20 ESV]
15 From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. [Rev 19:15 ESV]
At any rate, we shortly find this phrase, which I think again confirms the link between this prophecy and the 7th bowl:
31 ...the LORD has an indictment against the nations; he is entering into judgment with all flesh, and the wicked he will put to the sword, declares the LORD.' [Jer 25:31b ESV]
2020-There is more than a coincidence here. The prophecy in 8-14 includes the desolation of Babylon in perpetuity. So...do we say that this is Jeremiah recounting events in the Great Tribulation...is it near far? Can't really be...because as far as I can tell. Babylon is still experiencing "desolation forever". So...Is Revelation looking back to Jeremiah? Recounting an historical event instead of a "Great Tribulation Event"? That doesn't seem right either. So we are almost forced to say that the Babylon of Revelation is about a world system, and not about a specific place. But...I was thinking the description of that great city made it almost certain that it is a real place. So perhaps Revelation is saying that the destruction of that future city - the future Babylon, whatever its future name might be - will be destroyed in similar fashion to the destruction of Ancient Babylon, as Jeremiah prophesies here. Revelation is speaking of a Great Trib event as "visualized" through a historic event. Also, that phrase "judgment of all flesh" in vs 31 would be looking to Trib and Great Trib also.
2023 - I think "judgment of all flesh" locks us into a yet unfulfilled prophecy as the best interpretation of this. This is a prophecy against the whole world. Jeremiah was not a world traveler. This was about something far in the future, something AFTER the fall of ancient Babylon. Perhaps down through vs 29 Jeremiah prophecies about the future of Babylon, and then beginning in 30, he swings around to the other side of the Age of the Gentiles and prophesies about the 70th week. It makes sense. The grape treaders go on and on...how many references to the end times speak of birth pains - labor pains - that increase in both frequency and duration. What we are seeing here is that the end times will be a constant inexorable escalation of negative events - from wars, to natural disasters, to rampant disease, to wild animal populations exploding on the carrion available.
Vss 34-38, the last of the chapter, is again in the prose/poetry format. It is sort of call to lament, and the tone of it is set in this verse:
34 "Wail, you shepherds, and cry out, and roll in ashes, you lords of the flock, for the days of your slaughter and dispersion have come, and you shall fall like a choice vessel. [Jer 25:34 ESV]
vs 38 also needs to be observed closely. In vs 36b we see that this verse is about the Lord, and the action that He will ultimately take against the evil of mankind:
38 Like a lion he has left his lair, for their land has become a waste because of the sword of the oppressor, and because of his fierce anger." [Jer 25:38 ESV]
Seems to me that this is really the first (2021 - second) detailed glimpse of the end that we have seen in Jeremiah. To this point, he has been more concerned with the near devastation of Judah and Jerusalem at the hands of an earthly king, but in these verses, we are much further into the future. (MSB confirms that this is about Rev. 6-19.) 2020 - Could we say that the story of Israel's rebellion against God under the law, and the rebellion of the whole earth during the church age, are the same story, but with different actors and on different scales? I have lately seen much in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the minor prophets that reminds me of the US today. Similar sins, similar rebellion, similar tactics. But perhaps there is an even bigger picture, one of the state of the whole world, and if one could get a handle on that biggest picture, we might have a better perception of how close we are to the end. Is there so much trouble on the planet that it feels like the whole globe is about to blow apart? Is evil totally rampant across the planet, or are there still nations that obey God's laws and rules - whether Christian or not. Does it even count if a nation is still playing fair and honest, taking care of its downtrodden and oppressed, and dispensing justice without regard to economic status? Does it matter if we have nations obeying the general revelation of God's will though they don't worship in churches as "we" think they should? How does the planet's status compare to the situation in Jerusalem during Jeremiah's time? This would be hugely complex, far beyond me, but it sure seems like there should be some discernible parallels here.