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 25:15-17

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. 25:16 When they have drunk it, they will stagger to and fro ¹²  and act insane. For I will send wars sweeping through them.” ¹³ 

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. ¹⁴ 

Habakkuk 2:16

2:16 But you will become drunk ¹⁵  with shame, not majesty. ¹⁶ 

Now it is your turn to drink and expose your uncircumcised foreskin! ¹⁷ 

The cup of wine in the Lord’s right hand ¹⁸  is coming to you,

and disgrace will replace your majestic glory!

John 18:11

18:11 But Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword back into its sheath! Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?” ¹⁹ 

[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.

[25:16]  ¹² tn There is some debate about the meaning of the verb here. Both BDB 172 s.v. גָּעַשׁ Hithpo and KBL 191 s.v. גָּעַשׁ Hitpol interpret this of the back and forth movement of staggering. HALOT 192 s.v. גָּעַשׁ Hitpo interprets it as vomiting. The word is used elsewhere of the up and down movement of the mountains (2 Sam 22:8) and the up and down movement of the rolling waves of the Nile (Jer 46:7, 8). The fact that a different verb is used in v. 27 for vomiting would appear to argue against it referring to vomiting (contra W. L. Holladay, Jeremiah [Hermeneia], 1:674; it is “they” that do this not their stomachs).

[25:16]  ¹³ tn Heb “because of the sword that I will send among them.” Here, as often elsewhere in Jeremiah, the sword is figurative for warfare which brings death. See, e.g., 15:2. The causal particle here is found in verbal locutions where it is the cause of emotional states or action. Hence there are really two “agents” which produce the effects of “staggering” and “acting insane,” the cup filled with God’s wrath and the sword. The sword is the “more literal” and the actual agent by which the first agent’s action is carried out.

[25:17]  ¹⁴ 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.

[2:16]  ¹⁵ 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]  ¹⁶ tn Or “glory.”

[2:16]  ¹⁷ 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]  ¹⁸ 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.

[18:11]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “The cup that the Father has given me to drink, shall I not drink it?” The order of the clauses has been rearranged to reflect contemporary English style.