Verse 3
(3) The three and twentieth year (B.C. 603-4).—Thus there had been nineteen years of prophetic work under Josiah, and between three and four under Jehoiakim (Jeremiah 1:2). Of the former period we have but scanty record. The year is noticeable as that which apparently witnessed the first collection of Jeremiah’s prophetic utterances (Jeremiah 36:5-8).
Rising early and speaking.—See Note on Jeremiah 7:13.
Verse 5
(5) Turn ye again now . . .—The sum and substance of the work of all true prophets has always been found, it need scarcely be said, in the call to repentance and conversion; but there is, perhaps, a special reference to the substance of their preaching as recorded in 2 Kings 17:13. The words are interesting as showing that Jeremiah was probably seconded in his work by other prophets whose names have not come down to us.
Verse 6
(6) The works of your hands.—These were, of course, the idols which they had made and worshipped.
Verse 9
(9) The families of the north.—The phrase reminds us of the vision of “the seething pot from the face of the north” in Jeremiah 1:13, and includes all the mingled races, Scythians and others, who owned the sway of the Chaldæan king.
Nebuchadrezzar . . . my servant.—The use of the word which is applied by psalmists and prophets to David (Psalms 78:70; 2 Samuel 7:8) and to the future Christ (Isaiah 42:1; Isaiah 52:13) is every way remarkable. It has its parallel, and, in fact, its explanation, in the language in which Isaiah speaks of Cyrus as the shepherd, the anointed, of Jehovah. (Isaiah 44:28; Isaiah 45:1) Each ruler of the great empires of the world was, in ways he knew not, working out the purposes of God. The phrase “I will utterly destroy” may be noted as specially characteristic of Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 2:34; Deuteronomy 3:6, et al.) and Joshua (Joshua 2:10; Joshua 6:21; Joshua 8:26).
Verse 10
(10) The voice of mirth, and the voice of gladness.—The language is mainly an echo of Jeremiah 7:34; Jeremiah 16:9, but there are new features in the cessation of “the sound of the millstone,” i.e., of the grinding of corn by female slaves for the mid-day meal (Exodus 11:5; Matthew 24:41), and the lighting of the candle when the day’s work was done (Matthew 5:15). No words could paint more terribly the entire breaking up of family life, not only in its occasional festivities, but in its daily routine. The imagery reappears in Revelation 18:22-23.
Verse 11
(11) Shall serve the king of Babylon seventy-years.—This is the first mention of the duration of the captivity. The seventy years are commonly reckoned from B.C. 606, the date of the deportation of Jehoiakim and his princes, to B.C. 536, when the decree for the return of the exiles was issued by Cyrus. In 2 Chronicles 36:21 the number is connected with the land “enjoying her Sabbaths,” as though the long desolation came as a retribution for the people’s neglect of the law of the Sabbatical year, and, perhaps, also for their non-observance of the weekly Sabbaths. (Isaiah 56:4; Jeremiah 17:21-22.) For the apportionment of the reigns of the Babylonian kings that made up the seventy years, see the Chronological Table in the Introduction. Symbolically the number, as the multiple of seven and ten, represents the highest measure of completeness (comp. Matthew 18:22).
Verse 12
(12) I will punish the king of Babylon . . .—The words are omitted in the LXX. version of the chapter, which differs materially from the Hebrew text, and there are some internal grounds for suspecting it to be a later addition, possibly from the hand of the prophet himself, or, more probably, from that of Baruch as collecting and editing his writings, or of some later transcriber. In Jeremiah 25:26, as commonly interpreted, there is a prediction of the destruction of the king of Babylon veiled in enigmatic language. That we can understand well enough, if it was meant only for the initiated, but it is not easy to see why the same prophetic discourse should contain both the veiled and the open prediction. On the relation of the LXX. version to the Hebrew, see Introduction.
Verse 13
(13) Which Jeremiah hath prophesied . . .—Here again we have the trace of an interpolation. In the LXX. the words appear detached, as a title, and are followed by Jeremiah 49:35-39, and the other prophecies against the nations which the Hebrew text places at the end of the book (Jeremiah 46-51). The words “all that is written in this book” are manifestly the addition of a scribe. (See Introduction,)
Verse 14
(14) Shall serve themselves of them.—Better, shall make them their servants. The English “serve themselves” (a Gallicism in common use in the seventeenth century), which occurs again in Jeremiah 27:7, is now ambiguous, and hardly conveys the force of the original. What is meant is that the law of retribution will in due time be seen in its action upon those who were now masters of the world. The thought is the same as that expressed in the familiar “Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit” of Horace (Ep II. i., 156).
Verse 15
(15) For thus saith the Lord God.—In the LXX. this is preceded by Jeremiah 46-51, which are in their turn in a different order from that of the Hebrew.
The wine cup of this fury.—Literally, the cup of wine, even this fury, or, better, this wrath.
Verse 16
(16) They shall drink . . .—The words describe what history has often witnessed, the panic-terror of lesser nations before the onward march of a great conqueror—they are as if stricken with a drunken madness, and their despair or their resistance is equally infatuated. The imagery is one familiar in earlier prophets. (Isaiah 51:17; Isaiah 51:22; Habakkuk 2:16; Psalms 60:5; Psalms 75:8; Ezekiel 23:31.)
Verse 17
(17) Then took I the cup . . .—The words describe the act of the prophet as in the ecstasy of vision. One by one the nations are made to drink of that cup of the wrath of Jehovah of which His own country was to have the first and fullest draught. It is a strange example of the literalism of minds incapable of entering into the poetry of a prophet’s work, that one commentator (Michaelis) has supposed that the prophet offered an actual goblet of wine to the ambassadors of the states named, who were then, as he imagines, assembled at Jerusalem, as in Jeremiah 27:3.
Verse 18
(18) As it is this day.—The words are not in the LXX., and may probably have been added after the prediction had received its fulfilment in the final capture of Jerusalem and the desolation of the country. Here, as before in Jeremiah 25:13, we trace the hand of a transcriber. It will be noted that the prophet begins with the judgment about to fall on his own people, and then passes on from “the house of God” (1 Peter 4:17) to those that are without.
Verse 19
(19) Pharaoh king of Egypt . . .—The list of the nations begins, it will be seen, from the south and proceeds northwards; those that lay on the east and west being named, as it were, literally, according to their position. The Pharaoh of the time was Nechoh, who had been defeated at Carchemish.
Verse 20
(20) All the mingled people.—The word is all but identical with that used in Exodus 12:38 of the “mixed multitude” that accompanied the Israelites from Egypt, and in Nehemiah 13:3 of the alien population of Jerusalem. It occurs again in Jeremiah 25:24, Jeremiah 50:37, and Ezekiel 30:5, and is applied to the tribes of mixed races who were, in various degrees tributary to the state in connection with which they are named. Here the word probably refers to the Ionians or Carians whom Psammitichus, the father of Nechoh, had settled at Bubastis, and who served in his army as auxiliaries. (Herod. ii. 152, 154.)
Uz.—A district of Edom, famous as the scene of the great drama of the book of Job. It is commonly identified with the Arabia Deserta of classical geography. (See Notes on Job 1:1; Genesis 10:23.)
The land of the Philistines.—The four cities that follow belong to the same region. “Azzah” is the same as Gaza, the translators of the Authorised Version having in this instance, and in Deuteronomy 2:23; 1 Kings 4:24, adopted this instead of the more familiar form of the LXX. and Vulgate. “Gath,” which appears in the older lists of the five lords of the Philistines (1 Samuel 5:8; 1 Samuel 6:17; 1 Samuel 7:14), has disappeared, having possibly seceded from the confederacy. The “remnant of Ashdod” (the Greek Azotus) is a phrase characteristic of the prophet’s time, the Egyptian king Psammitichus having captured it, after a siege of twenty-nine years, in B.C. 630. (Herod. ii. 157.)
Verse 22
(22) The isles which are beyond the sea.—Better, island. The Hebrew word is in the singular, and is properly, as in the margin, a “region by the sea-side”—a “coast-land,” and thus wider in its extent than our “island.” Here the position in which it occurs tends to identify it either with Cyprus or the coast of Cilicia, or Phœnician colonies generally in the Mediterranean. Cyprus seems the most probable of these.
Verse 23
(23) Dedan, and Tema, and Buz.—From the west we pass again to the east, the first two districts lying to the south-east of Edom, the last probably in the same region. For Dedan see Genesis 10:7; Genesis 25:3; Genesis 25:2; 1 Chronicles 1:9; 1 Chronicles 1:32; Isaiah 21:13; Ezekiel 25:13. For Tema, on the modern pilgrims’ road from Damascus to Mecca, see Isaiah 21:14; Job 6:19. For Buz see Genesis 22:21. The fact that the “travelling companies of Dedanim” (Isaiah 21:13) carried on the trade between Tyre and Arabia (Ezekiel 27:15) accounts in part for their mention here.
All that are in the utmost corners.—The marginal reading gives the true meaning—all that have the corners of their temples shorn. (See Note on Jeremiah 9:26.) The words point to the nomad tribes of Kedar, who were distinguished by this peculiarity. For “mingled people,” see Note on Jeremiah 25:20. The genealogies of Genesis 10, Genesis 25:1-16, and 1 Chronicles 1 point to a great intermingling of Cushite and Semitic races in these regions.
Verse 24
(24) All the kings of Arabia.—The same phrase occurs in 1 Kings 10:15, and is used for the nomadic tribes bordering on Palestine rather than in the wider sense of classical geographers.
Verse 25
(25) Zimri.—The name occurs nowhere else in the Bible or out of it as the name of a country. It is possibly connected with Zimran, the eldest son of Abraham by Keturah (Genesis 25:2), and points, therefore—as does its position here—to a nomad tribe in Arabia lying between the Red Sea, Arabia, and the Persian Gulf. The name Zabram occurs in Greek geographers as that of a city on the Red Sea west of Mecca, and there was a Zimara on the Upper Euphrates. “Elam,” properly applied to the region of which Susa was the capital (Daniel 8:2), was extended by the Hebrew writers to the whole of Persia. (See Notes on Genesis 10:22; Genesis 14:1-12; Isaiah 21:2.) As in the last of these references, it is coupled here with Media.
Verse 26
(26) The kings of the north.—The term is used generally (the Jews knowing comparatively little of the detailed geography of that region, the Grog, Magog, Meshech, and Tubal of Ezekiel 38, 39), as in Jeremiah 1:14, for the Scythians and other nations lying between the Caspian Sea and the Tigris. In the corresponding passage of Jeremiah 51:27, Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz are specially named.
The kingdoms of the world.—The words are, of course, limited by the horizon of the prophet’s vision. As the “world” of the New Testament writers was the Roman Empire, so in the life of Jeremiah it was identical with that of Babylon. (Comp. Daniel 2:38; Daniel 4:22.)
The king of Sheshach.—The name, which obviously is, from its position, the culminating point of the whole prophecy, is found only here and in Jeremiah 51:41. No city or country bearing this name is mentioned in the Old Testament or in any ancient writer. The traditional Rabbinic explanation is beyond doubt the true one. We have here the earliest known example of the use of a cypher-writing to disguise the meaning of what was written from all but the initiated. The cypher in this instance, known by the significant name of ATBASH (i.e., A taking the place of T, and T of A, B of SH, and SH of B, and so on), consisted in the use of the Hebrew alphabet in an inverted order, thus giving SHeSHaCH as an equivalent for BaBeL. This, then, was the crowning mystery reserved to the last. The Chaldæan kingdom was to do its work as the scourge of God upon the nations; but it was simply an instrument in His hand, as the Assyrians had been in their day (Isaiah 10:15); and when the work was done, the law of a righteous retribution would be felt by it and by its rulers. It adds to the point of the enigma that the word Sheshach would suggest to an Hebrew, taking its probable etymology, the idea of “crouching” or “sinking.” It may be noted (1) that the use of such a cypher seems to belong to the same mental characteristics as the prominence of the Hebrew alphabet in the acrostic structure of the Lamentations; (2) that the name is omitted by the LXX. both here and in Jeremiah 51:41; and (3) that another instance of the same cypher is found in Jeremiah 51:1. The second fact is presumptive evidence that it was not found in the copy which the Greek translators had before them; and the natural inference from this is that there were two editions of the prophecy even in the prophet’s time—one with and the other without the enigmatic word, the latter being probably the earlier of the two, the former adding, for the comfort of Israel, at once the limits of their exile (Jeremiah 25:14), and this intimation (so veiled that the Chaldæans, if they came across it, would not be likely to understand its meaning) of the way in which it would at last be brought to its close. The use of the cypher has, however, been questioned by some writers, who refer the name to shishaki, a possible form of the name of the moon-god of the Chaldæans (Rawlinson: Herod, i., p. 616). If the existence of any obscure region bearing the name could be proved, it would still be perfectly compatible with the use of the cypher, as veiling its true significance. Other meanings for the word, such as “the warlike city,” “the king’s palace,” have been suggested by recent scholars.
Verse 27
(27) Drink ye, and be drunken . . .—The bold imagery points, like that of Jeremiah 25:16, to the terror and dismay which made joint action impossible, and reduced the nations whom it affected to a helpless impotence. The word most alien to our modern feeling—“spue”—is significant, as implying that the spoilers of Israel should be spoiled. They should be made, to use a word which expresses essentially the same thought, to disgorge their prey.
Verse 28
(28) Ye shall certainly drink.—Literally, Drinking, ye shall drink.
Verse 29
(29) I begin to bring evil . . .?—The thought is the same as that of 1 Peter 4:17, “If judgment shall begin at the house of God . . .?” If this were His chastisement of those who were His chosen people, it followed à fortiori that those who were less favoured and had less claims should not escape. For them, as for Judah, the one wise and safe course was to accept their punishment and submit. (Comp. Jeremiah 49:12.)
Verse 30
(30) He shall mightily roar upon his habitation.—The use of the same English word for two Hebrew words of very different meaning is here singularly infelicitous. The first “habitation” is the dwelling-place of Jehovah, from which the thunders of His wrath are heard. The second is the “pasture” or dwelling-place of the flock and its shepherds, as in Jeremiah 6:2; Jeremiah 10:25; Psalms 79:7, upon whom the storm falls. Possibly, under its association with this new word, the roaring becomes to the prophet’s mind as that of the lion which attacks the flock. The same bold imagery for the Divine judgments meets us in Joel 3:16; Amos 1:2; Amos 3:8.
A shout, as they that tread the grapes.—The image is reproduced from Isaiah 63:3. The “shout” of those who tread the wine-press, crushing the grapes beneath their feet (Isaiah 16:10), is as the victorious war-cry of the Lord of Hosts, working through human conquerors, and crushing the nations of the earth in His avenging wrath.
Verse 31
(31) A noise.—i.e., the tumult of an advancing army (Isaiah 13:4; Isaiah 17:12).
A controversy.—The term properly denotes a legal process, like the “pleading” of Jeremiah 2:9; Jeremiah 2:35, rather than a debate or discussion, and is therefore rightly followed by the technical term “will plead” or “judge.” Jehovah appears, so to speak, as the Accuser in the suit in which He is also the supreme Judge.
Verse 32
(32) Whirlwind.—The word, as in Jeremiah 23:19, is more generic, a tempest. The storm is seen as it were rising from the “coasts”—i.e., the sides or horizon of the earth, as in Jeremiah 6:22—and spreading over all the nations.
Verse 33
(33) They shall not be lamented . . .—As in other pictures of slaughter (Jeremiah 8:2; Jeremiah 16:4) the omission of the usual rites of sepulture is brought in as an aggravation of the wretchedness. The corpses of the slain are to lie rotting on the ground. The phrase “slain of the Lord” reproduces Isaiah 66:16.
Verse 34
(34) Howl, ye shepherds.—The idea of the flock suggested in the “habitation” or “pasture” of Jeremiah 25:30 is here expanded. The “shepherds” are, as usual, the rulers of the people (Jeremiah 10:21; Jeremiah 22:22, et al.).
Wallow yourselves in the ashes.—The words in italics have probably been added to bring the passage into conformity with Jeremiah 6:26, but they are not needed, and the interpretation is unauthorised. Better, therefore, roll on the ground. By some interpreters the word is rendered “sprinkle yourselves.” The “principal of the flock” are the “strong ones,” i.e., the best and fattest of the rams, denoting figuratively the princes and captains of the people.
And of your dispersions.—The Hebrew text seems faulty, and a slight alteration, now generally accepted, gives, and I will scatter you.
Like a pleasant vessel.—The sudden change of metaphor is somewhat startling, as judged by our rules of rhetoric; but the poets and prophets of Israel wrote without the fear of criticism, and used each image that presented itself, if it was fit for its immediate purpose, without caring much for continuity. The thought of the scattered flock suggested the idea of a dispersion or breaking-up of another kind, even that of the “pleasant vessel” (literally, the vessel of desire, i.e., a vase made as for kingly and honourable uses), falling with a crash and shivered into fragments, which Jeremiah had presented to the people in his acted parable and spoken words in Jeremiah 19:10-11, and in Jeremiah 22:28. The LXX. translators give like the chosen rams, as if anxious to avoid the mixed metaphor, and venturing on a conjectural emendation of the text.
Verse 36
(36) A voice of the cry . . . shall be heard.—Here again the insertion of the words in italics is a change for the worse, and reduces the dramatic vividness of the Hebrew to the tamest prose. The prophet speaks as if he actually heard the “cry of the shepherds”—i.e., the princes—and the howling of the “principal of the flocks”—i.e., of the captains under them. The work of spoiling was begun.
Verse 37
(37) Peaceable habitations.—Better, as before (Jeremiah 25:30), peaceful pastures.
Verse 38
(38) He hath forsaken his covert . . .—The image of Jeremiah 25:30 is reproduced. The thunder of Jehovah’s wrath is as the roaring of the lion (Amos 3:8). He is as the lion leaving its hiding-place in the forest, and going forth to do its work of vengeance.
Because of the fierceness of the oppressor.—A slight alteration, adopted by many commentators, gives “because of the sword of oppression,” as in Jeremiah 46:16; Jeremiah 50:16. The word for “oppressor” or “oppression” also means “dove,” and is so taken by the Vulg., a facie iræ columbæ, and it has been stated that this bird was blazoned on the standards of the Babylonians (Diod. Sic. ii. 4), and so had become a symbol of their power. In Jeremiah 46:16; Jeremiah 50:16 the LXX., which here gives “the great sword,” reads “the Greek sword,” as though the Hebrew word (Iona) meant Javan or Ionia. That meaning is, of course, out of the question here. On the whole there seems no reason for altering the English version, though the precise combination of words is an unusual one.