25:15 The Lord instructed Jeremiah to take from His hand, figuratively, a cup of His wrath and to cause all the nations to whom the Lord would send him to drink from it. The cup is a common figure for the wrath of God in Scripture (cf. 13:12-14; 49:12; 51:7; Job 21:10; Ps. 60:3; Isa. 51:17, 21-22; Lam. 4:21; Ezek. 23:31-34; Hab. 2:16; Mark 10:39; 14:36; Luke 22:42; John 18:11; Rev. 14:8, 10; 16:19; 18:6).342This was another symbolic action that God prescribed to communicate to His people, though in this case the action was not literal.
25:16 The outpouring of divine wrath on them, in war, would make them behave as though they had drunk too much wine. They would stagger around and lose control of their senses. Drunkenness in the Bible is sometimes a symbol of a sinful state that calls for judgment (cf. 13:12-14; Isa. 19:14; 28:7-13).
25:17 Jeremiah gave the messages of divine judgment to the nations to which God sent him.343
"This section identifying the judgments of God against the evil nations is expanded in chapters 46 through 51. These chapters are appropriately held off until the end of the book of Jeremiah since the main burden of the prophet is the destiny of his own people, Judah, and the record would therefore give precedence to this. Furthermore, the judgments upon the evil nations would fall after the judgment upon Judah, and so the position of chapters 46 through 51 is chronologically fitting at the end of the book."344
25:18-26 Jeremiah sent messages of judgment to Jerusalem and Judah, Egypt, the land of Uz (to the east, Job 1:1), Philistia, Edom, Moab, Ammon, Tyre and Sidon and their colonies in the Mediterranean, the desert areas of Dedan and Tema (both southeast of Edom), Buz (possibly in northern Arabia), some desert Arab tribes and nations, Zimri (perhaps between Arabia and Persia), Elam and Media (east of the Tigris River), other nations farther north and everywhere else, and Babylon.345Babylon conquered all these other nations.
25:27 Jeremiah was to announce the doom of all these nations by military conquest. Their fate would be similar to that of a drunken man.
25:28 If they refused to accept Jeremiah's prophecies, the prophet was to tell them that they would experience God's judgment anyway.
25:29 God's work of judgment in Jerusalem was just the beginning of larger scale judgment that would extend to all nations (cf. Amos 3:2; 1 Pet. 4:17). Final fulfillment awaits the return of Jesus Christ when He will destroy all nations that oppose Him (Rev. 16:14-16).
