Jeremiah 25:1

CHAPTER XXV

This chapter contains a summary of the judgments denounced by

Jeremiah against Judah, Babylon, and many other nations. It

begins with reproving the Jews for disobeying the calls of God

to repentance, 1-7;

on which account their captivity, with that of other

neighbouring nations, during seventy years, is foretold, 8-11.

At the expiration of that period, (computing from the invasion

of Nebuchadnezzar in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, to the

famous edict of the first year of Cyrus,) an end was to be put

to the Babylonian empire, 12-14.

All this is again declared by the emblem of that cup of wrath

which the prophet, as it should seem in a vision, tendered

to all the nations which he enumerates, 15-29.

And for farther confirmation, it is a third time repeated in a

very beautiful and elevated strain of poetry, 30-38.

The talent of diversifying the ideas, images, and language,

even when the subject is the same, or nearly so, appears no

where in such perfection as among the sacred poets.

NOTES ON CHAP. XXV

Verse Jeremiah 25:1. The word that came to Jeremiah - to the fourth year] This prophecy, we see, was delivered in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, and the chapter that contains it is utterly out of its place. It should be between chapters xxxv. (Jeremiah 35) and xxxvi (Jeremiah 36).

The defeat of the Egyptians by Nebuchadnezzar at Carchemish, and the subsequent taking of Jerusalem, occurred in this year, viz., the fourth year of Jehoiakim.

The first year of Nebuchadrezzar] This king was associated with his father two years before the death of the latter. The Jews reckon his reign from this time, and this was the first of those two years; but the Chaldeans date the commencement of his reign two years later, viz., at the death of his father.