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

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.

Jeremiah 25:15

Judah and the Nations Will Experience God’s Wrath

25:15 So ⁹  the Lord, the God of Israel, spoke to me in a vision. ¹⁰  “Take this cup from my hand. It is filled with the wine of my wrath. ¹¹  Take it and make the nations to whom I send you drink it.

Lamentations 4:21

The Prophet Speaks:

ש (Sin/Shin)

4:21 Rejoice and be glad for now, ¹²  O people of Edom, ¹³ 

who reside in the land of Uz.

But the cup of judgment ¹⁴  will pass ¹⁵  to you also;

you will get drunk and take off your clothes.

Ezekiel 23:31-32

23:31 You have followed the ways of your sister, so I will place her cup of judgment ¹⁶  in your hand. 23:32 “This is what the sovereign Lord says: “You will drink your sister’s deep and wide cup; ¹⁷  you will be scorned and derided, for it holds a great deal.

Habakkuk 2:16

2:16 But you will become drunk ¹⁸  with shame, not majesty. ¹⁹ 

Now it is your turn to drink and expose your uncircumcised foreskin! ²⁰ 

The cup of wine in the Lord’s right hand ²¹  is coming to you,

and disgrace will replace your majestic glory!

Revelation 16:19

16:19 The ²²  great city was split into three parts and the cities of the nations ²³  collapsed. ²⁴  So ²⁵  Babylon the great was remembered before God, and was given the cup ²⁶  filled with the wine made of God’s furious wrath. ²⁷ 

Revelation 18:16

18:16 saying,

“Woe, woe, O great city –

dressed in fine linen, purple and scarlet clothing, ²⁸ 

and adorned with gold, ²⁹  precious stones, and pearls –

[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.”

[25:15]  ⁹ 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]  ¹⁰ 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]  ¹¹ 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.

[4:21]  ¹² tn The phrase “for now” is added in the translation to highlight the implied contrast between the present joy of the Gentiles (4:21a) and their future judgment (4:21b).

[4:21]  ¹³ tn Heb “O Daughter of Edom.”

[4:21]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “the cup.” Judgment is often depicted as a cup of wine that God forces a person to drink, causing him to lose consciousness, red wine drooling out of his mouth – resembling corpses lying on the ground as a result of the actual onslaught of the Lord’s judgment. The drunkard will reel and stagger, causing bodily injury to himself – an apt metaphor to describe the devastating effects of God’s judgment. Just as a cup of poison kills all those who are forced to drink it, the cup of God’s wrath destroys all those who must drink it (e.g., Ps 75:9; Isa 51:17, 22; Jer 25:15, 17, 28; 49:12; 51:7; Lam 4:21; Ezek 23:33; Hab 2:16).

[4:21]  ¹⁵ tn The imperfect verb “will pass” may also be a jussive, continuing the element of request, “let the cup pass…”

[23:31]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “her cup.” A cup of intoxicating strong drink is used, here and elsewhere, as a metaphor for judgment because both leave one confused and reeling. (See Jer 25:15, 17, 28; Hab 2:16.) The cup of wrath is a theme also found in the NT (Mark 14:36).

[23:32]  ¹⁷ sn The image of a deep and wide cup suggests the degree of punishment; it will be extensive and leave the victim helpless.

[2:16]  ¹⁸ 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]  ¹⁹ tn Or “glory.”

[2:16]  ²⁰ 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]  ²¹ 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.

[16:19]  ²² tn Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[16:19]  ²³ tn Or “of the Gentiles” (the same Greek word may be translated “Gentiles” or “nations”).

[16:19]  ²⁴ tn Grk “fell.”

[16:19]  ²⁵ tn Here καί (kai) has been translated as “so” to indicate the implied result of Babylon’s misdeeds (see Rev 14:8).

[16:19]  ²⁶ 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]  ²⁷ 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.

[18:16]  ²⁸ tn The word “clothing” is supplied to clarify that the words “purple” and “scarlet” refer to cloth or garments rather than colors.

[18:16]  ²⁹ tn Grk “gilded with gold” (an instance of semantic reinforcement, see L&N 49.29).