Psalms 75:8

75:8 For the Lord holds in his hand a cup full

of foaming wine mixed with spices, ¹ 

and pours it out. ² 

Surely all the wicked of the earth

will slurp it up and drink it to its very last drop.” ³ 

Isaiah 51:17

51:17 Wake up! Wake up!

Get up, O Jerusalem!

You drank from the cup the Lord passed to you,

which was full of his anger! ⁴ 

You drained dry

the goblet full of intoxicating wine. ⁵ 

Isaiah 51:22-23

51:22 This is what your sovereign master, ⁶  the Lord your God, says:

“Look, I have removed from your hand

the cup of intoxicating wine, ⁷ 

the goblet full of my anger. ⁸ 

You will no longer have to drink it.

51:23 I will put it into the hand of your tormentors ⁹ 

who said to you, ‘Lie down, so we can walk over you.’

You made your back like the ground,

and like the street for those who walked over you.”

Jeremiah 25:15

Judah and the Nations Will Experience God’s Wrath

25:15 So ¹⁰  the Lord, the God of Israel, spoke to me in a vision. ¹¹  “Take this cup from my hand. It is filled with the wine of my wrath. ¹²  Take it and make the nations to whom I send you drink it.

Jeremiah 25:17

25:17 So I took the cup from the Lord’s hand. I made all the nations to whom he sent me drink the wine of his wrath. ¹³ 

Jeremiah 49:12

49:12 For the Lord says, “If even those who did not deserve to drink from the cup of my wrath must drink from it, do you think you will go unpunished? You will not go unpunished, but must certainly drink from the cup of my wrath. ¹⁴ 

Jeremiah 51:7

51:7 Babylonia had been a gold cup in the Lord’s hand.

She had made the whole world drunk.

The nations had drunk from the wine of her wrath. ¹⁵ 

So they have all gone mad. ¹⁶ 

Habakkuk 2:16

2:16 But you will become drunk ¹⁷  with shame, not majesty. ¹⁸ 

Now it is your turn to drink and expose your uncircumcised foreskin! ¹⁹ 

The cup of wine in the Lord’s right hand ²⁰  is coming to you,

and disgrace will replace your majestic glory!

Revelation 14:10

14:10 that person ²¹  will also drink of the wine of God’s anger ²²  that has been mixed undiluted in the cup of his wrath, and he will be tortured with fire and sulfur ²³  in front of the holy angels and in front of the Lamb.

Revelation 16:19

16:19 The ²⁴  great city was split into three parts and the cities of the nations ²⁵  collapsed. ²⁶  So ²⁷  Babylon the great was remembered before God, and was given the cup ²⁸  filled with the wine made of God’s furious wrath. ²⁹ 

Revelation 18:6

18:6 Repay her the same way she repaid others; ³⁰  pay her back double ³¹  corresponding to her deeds. In the cup she mixed, mix double the amount for her.

[75:8]  ¹ tn Heb “for a cup [is] in the hand of the Lord, and wine foams, it is full of a spiced drink.” The noun מֶסֶךְ (mesekh) refers to a “mixture” of wine and spices.

[75:8]  ² tn Heb “and he pours out from this.”

[75:8]  ³ tn Heb “surely its dregs they slurp up and drink, all the wicked of the earth.”

[51:17]  ⁴ tn Heb “[you] who have drunk from the hand of the Lord the cup of his anger.”

[51:17]  ⁵ tn Heb “the goblet, the cup [that causes] staggering, you drank, you drained.”

[51:22]  ⁶ tn The Hebrew term translated “sovereign master” here is אֲדֹנָי (’adonay).

[51:22]  ⁷ tn Heb “the cup of [= that causes] staggering” (so ASV, NAB, NRSV); NASB “the cup of reeling.”

[51:22]  ⁸ tn Heb “the goblet of the cup of my anger.”

[51:23]  ⁹ tn That is, to make them drink it.

[25:15]  ¹⁰ tn This is an attempt to render the Hebrew particle כִּי (ki) which is probably being used in the sense that BDB 473-74 s.v. כִּי 3.c notes, i.e., the causal connection is somewhat loose, related here to the prophecies against the nations. “So” seems to be the most appropriate way to represent this.

[25:15]  ¹¹ tn Heb “Thus said the Lord, the God of Israel, to me.” It is generally understood that the communication is visionary. God does not have a “hand” and the action of going to the nations and making them drink of the cup are scarcely literal. The words are supplied in the translation to show the figurative nature of this passage.

[25:15]  ¹² sn “Drinking from the cup of wrath” is a common figure to represent being punished by God. Isaiah had used it earlier to refer to the punishment which Judah was to suffer and from which God would deliver her (Isa 51:17, 22) and Jeremiah’s contemporary Habakkuk uses it of Babylon “pouring out its wrath” on the nations and in turn being forced to drink the bitter cup herself (Hab 2:15-16). In Jer 51:7 the Lord will identify Babylon as the cup which makes the nations stagger. In v. 16 drinking from the cup will be identified with the sword (i.e., wars) that the Lord will send against the nations. Babylon is also to be identified as the sword (cf. Jer 51:20-23). What is being alluded to here in highly figurative language is the judgment that the Lord will wreak on the nations listed here through the Babylonians. The prophecy given here in symbolical form is thus an expansion of the one in vv. 9-11.

[25:17]  ¹³ tn The words “the wine of his wrath” are not in the text but are implicit in the metaphor (see vv. 15-16). They are supplied in the translation for clarity.

[49:12]  ¹⁴ tn The words “of my wrath” after “cup” in the first line and “from the cup of my wrath” in the last line are not in the text but are implicit in the metaphor. They have been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[51:7]  ¹⁵ tn The words “of her wrath” are not in the Hebrew text but are supplied in the translation to help those readers who are not familiar with the figure of the “cup of the Lord’s wrath.”

[51:7]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “upon the grounds of such conditions the nations have gone mad.”

[2:16]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “are filled.” The translation assumes the verbal form is a perfect of certitude, emphasizing the certainty of Babylon’s coming judgment, which will reduce the majestic empire to shame and humiliation.

[2:16]  ¹⁸ tn Or “glory.”

[2:16]  ¹⁹ tc Heb “drink, even you, and show the foreskin.” Instead of הֵעָרֵל (he’arel, “show the foreskin”) one of the Dead Sea scrolls has הֵרָעֵל (hera’el, “stumble”). This reading also has support from several ancient versions and is followed by the NEB (“you too shall drink until you stagger”) and NRSV (“Drink, you yourself, and stagger”). For a defense of the Hebrew text, see P. D. Miller, Jr., Sin and Judgment in the Prophets, 63-64.

[2:16]  ²⁰ sn The Lord’s right hand represents his military power. He will force the Babylonians to experience the same humiliating defeat they inflicted on others.

[14:10]  ²¹ tn Grk “he himself.”

[14:10]  ²² tn The Greek word for “anger” here is θυμός (qumos), a wordplay on the “passion” (θυμός) of the personified city of Babylon in 14:8.

[14:10]  ²³ tn Traditionally, “brimstone.”

[16:19]  ²⁴ tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[16:19]  ²⁵ tn Or “of the Gentiles” (the same Greek word may be translated “Gentiles” or “nations”).

[16:19]  ²⁶ tn Grk “fell.”

[16:19]  ²⁷ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “so” to indicate the implied result of Babylon’s misdeeds (see Rev 14:8).

[16:19]  ²⁸ tn Grk “the cup of the wine of the anger of the wrath of him.” The concatenation of four genitives has been rendered somewhat differently by various translations (see the note on the word “wrath”).

[16:19]  ²⁹ tn Following BDAG 461 s.v. θυμός 2, the combination of the genitives of θυμός (qumo") and ὀργή (orgh) in Rev 16:19 and 19:15 are taken to be a strengthening of the thought as in the OT and Qumran literature (Exod 32:12; Jer 32:37; Lam 2:3; CD 10:9). Thus in Rev 14:8 (to which the present passage alludes) and 18:3 there is irony: The wine of immoral behavior with which Babylon makes the nations drunk becomes the wine of God’s wrath for her.

[18:6]  ³⁰ tn The word “others” is not in the Greek text, but is implied. Direct objects were frequently omitted in Greek when clear from the context.

[18:6]  ³¹ tn On this term BDAG 252 s.v. διπλόω states, “to double τὰ διπλᾶ pay back double Rv 18:6.”