Jeremiah 25:1-38

25:1 | The fourth year of Jehoiakim (605 BC) is also mentioned in 36:1 and 45:1, and it marked a turning point in Jeremiah’s ministry. The Babylonians became the dominant power in the ancient Near East, and Jehoiakim sealed Judah’s fate by destroying the scroll of Jeremiah’s prophecies and disregarding the warnings of the coming judgment.

25:8-11 | Jeremiah had been prophesying for more than 20 years that judgment would fall on Judah if she did not turn from her evil ways and come back to God. Other prophetic contemporaries of Jeremiah included Ezekiel, Daniel, Obadiah, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah. Judah had every opportunity to hear the truth and repent of her sinful ways, but she did not.

25:9 | The Lord refers to Nebuchadnezzar as His servant. The title does not mean that the king had a personal relationship with the Lord, although he did come to acknowledge the greatness of the Lord (Dan. 4); the Lord was using him merely to carry out His judgment. The Lord controls the hearts of kings (Prov. 21:1) and uses the nations to accomplish His purposes.

25:11 | The exile would last for seventy years, from 605 BC until 587 BC (29:10; 2 Chron. 36:21-22; Dan. 9:2). This period represents an entire lifetime, indicating that the generation sent away into exile would not be the same as the one that returned to the land (Num. 13-14).

25:15-28 | The Lord’s judgment of the nations is pictured as a wine cup of fury, and the nations would stagger and reel under its power (51:7; Rev. 14:10). This judgment would fall on the nations and then on Sheshach, a code word for Babylon that involves substituting the last letters of the Hebrew alphabet for the first. The precise reason for using it is not clear.

25:32-33 | The judgment of Judah, the nations, and Babylon in history prefigures the final judgment and the great battle that will overtake the entire earth in the end times (Isa. 34:2-3). The empire of Antichrist is described as “Babylon the Great” in Revelation 17-19. In the Battle of Armageddon, the Antichrist will be the leader (Rev. 19:19), and his armies are defeated by the word of Christ – “a sharp sword” (Rev. 19:15, 21).