The four message that follow concern Judah (ch. 24), Babylon (25:1-14), other surrounding nations (25:15-29), and all the earth (25:30-38).
24:1 This prophetic message came to Jeremiah after Nebuchadnezzar had taken King Jehoiachin (Coniah, Jeconiah, cf. 22:24) and many of the other royal counselors, craftsmen, and smiths (or artisans) captive to Babylon in 597 B.C.329The people taken captive at this time constituted the cream of the country's leadership (cf. 2 Kings 24:14-15).
"After the exile of Jehoiachin and the leading citizens of Judah (2 K. 24:10-17), those who remained seem to have been full of optimism for the future. The new king Zedekiah even became involved in a conspiracy with the surrounding peoples for further rebellion against Babylon (ch. 27). The false prophets spoke of a quick return of the exiles from Babylon (ch. 28). Jeremiah saw that the attitude of the king and his supporters in Judah was wrong. True, there would be a new day for Judah and the people of God, but the future lay with the exiles and not with Zedekiah and his supporters."330
Jeremiah saw two baskets of figs in the temple courtyard (cf. 1:11-16; Amos 7:1-9; 8:1-3). This is where people brought their offerings, so these two baskets may have contained two offerings, perhaps firstfruit offerings. It is impossible to determine if Jeremiah saw this scene in a vision or in actuality. As a message his account of his experience resembles a parable.
24:2-3 In one basket there were very good figs, like the highly valued figs that matured in June (cf. Isa. 28:4; Hos. 9:10), and in the other there were such bad figs that no one could eat them. In Jeremiah's day it was not uncommon for people to bring less than the best to the Lord. Jeremiah explained what he saw to the Lord in answer to the Lord's question.
24:4-5 The Lord explained that He would regard the people that had gone into exile with Jehoiachin as good, like the good figs.
24:6 He would watch over them and return them to the Promised Land. He would cause them to flourish, like a building under construction or a plant that grows. No one would tear them down or uproot them (cf. 1:10; 12:14-17; 18:7-9; 31:27-28).331
24:7 God would give them a heart to know Him because, as Yahweh, He could do that. They would resume covenant relationship as Chosen People and God because the people would repent and return to God wholeheartedly.
This change in the people only occurred partially during the Exile. We believe that final fulfillment is yet future when Jesus Christ returns (cf. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:24-32; Matt. 24:29-31).332
24:8 The bad figs corresponded to King Zedekiah, his administrators, the people who remained in Jerusalem and Judah, and the Judahites who had already fled to Egypt for safety.
"We are not told when people fled to Egypt, but those of pro-Egyptian sympathies may have settled there when Jehoahaz was taken there in 609 B.C. (2 K. 23:34) or when Jehoiakim became Nebuchadrezzar's vassal (cf. 603 B.C.) or even when Nebuchadrezzar invaded Judah in 598/7 B.C."333
24:9 They would become an object of terror and a source of evil for the other kingdoms of the earth. They would become objects of criticism, ridicule, cursing, and a proverb about what unfaithfulness to covenant can result in wherever they would go (cf. 19:8).
24:10 The Lord would send war and its accompanying disasters, famine and disease, on those of them still in the land until they perished (cf. 21:7). Initial fulfillment came in 586 B.C. (cf. Deut. 28:25, 37), but an even more extensive one followed in A.D. 70 (cf. Matt. 23:38).
"The natural reaction to the fate of the captives deported in 597, and to the good fortune of those who were left behind, was to see the former as God's throw-outs, the bad figs; and to see the rest as his men of promise, the good figsthat were worth keeping. But, as ever, God's thoughts and plans were not at all what men imagined."334
Chapter 25 serves as a capstone for all of Jeremiah's previous prophecies. The prophet's perspective now broadens quickly to include the whole world and divine judgments ordained for it.
25:1-2 Jeremiah received another prophetic message from the Lord in 605 B.C., which he delivered to the people of Jerusalem and Judah.335This was a timely prophecy because in this year Nebuchadnezzar defeated Pharaoh Necho at Carchemish. His victory resulted in the balance of power shifting in the ancient Near East from Assyria to Neo-Babylonia. The Judahites would have wondered how this change would affect them. Later the same year Nebuchadnezzar invaded Palestine, attacked Jerusalem, and deported some of the people of Judah to Babylon.
25:3 The prophet announced that he had been preaching to his audience regularly for 23 years, but they had not paid attention to what he had said. According to 1:2, Jeremiah began his ministry in 627 B.C.
25:4 The Lord had repeatedly sent other prophets to them, true prophets, but the people did not listen to them either.336
25:5-6 The message of all these prophets had been to turn from evil lifestyles and activities. If the people did, the Lord would allow them to remain in their land forever. They were to reject the pagan deities and handmade gods that they served and worshipped because they angered Yahweh (cf. Matt. 4:10).337If they did, He would do them no harm.
25:7 Yet the people had not listened to the Lord but provoked Him to anger by making idols to their own harm.
25:8-9 The Lord announced that because they had not obeyed Him He would bring Nebuchadnezzar down from the north and destroy them and their neighbor nations with an awful, everlasting devastation. Nebuchadnezzar was the Lord's servant in the same sense Cyrus was (cf. Isa. 44:28-45:1); he served the Lord by carrying out His will for the most part unwittingly (cf. 27:6; 43:10; Acts 2:23). Since God's people would not listen to His servants the prophets (v. 4), the Lord would send another type of servant to get their attention.
25:10 He would remove everyday joy from their lives, even the joy of new marriages, as well as the productivity of the people. They would run out of grain, oil, and other necessities. He would leave them dwelling in darkness. All these expressions refer to the ending of life (cf. Eccles. 12:3-6).
"I must say that when I pray for my country and our culture, I do not pray for God's justice. I can only plead for His mercy. If we had the justice of God, we would not have peace. We would have a situation like Jeremiah's. How dare we pray for justice upon our culture when we have so deliberately turned away for God and His revelation? Why should God bless us?"338
25:11 The whole land would remain a horrible desolation for 70 years during which Israel and Judah would be absent from the Promised Land. This is the first prophecy of the length of the Babylonian captivity. The Israelites had not observed 70 sabbatical years, so the seventy-year exile restored rest to the land (2 Chron. 36:20-21).
25:12 After 70 years, the Lord promised to punish the king of Babylon and his nation for their sins and make their land a desolation forever (cf. Hab. 1-2).339Babylon fell in 539 B.C. when Cyrus the Persian captured and overthrew it.340It did not become a complete desolation, however, which has led literal interpreters to conclude that a future destruction of Babylon will fulfill this prophecy (Rev. 16:19; 17:1-19:10).341
25:13 The Lord would fulfill all the prophecies that Jeremiah had giving concerning Babylon. When the Lord made this promise some of Jeremiah's prophecies were already in a book.
25:14 Other nations and great kings would enslave the Babylonians, Judah's mighty captors. Yahweh would pay back Babylon for all that she had done. Some of these many nations with great kings included the Medes, the Persians, and their several allies under Cyrus the Great.
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).
25:30 Jeremiah was also to announce that God would prepare to judge all the inhabitants of the earth (v. 29). As a lion announces its intent to attack with a roar, so Yahweh would one day announce His attack on earth dwellers (cf. Rev. 6).346He would vigorously tread the nations in the wine press of His wrath (cf. Rev. 14:18-20; 16:14-16). This anticipates Tribulation judgments (Rev. 6-18).
25:31 His judgment would cause clamor worldwide. He would judge everyone because He holds them guilty in a lawsuit. The wicked would die violent deaths.
25:32 Almighty Yahweh also announced that evil was spreading all over the world. As a result, a storm of divine judgment of global proportions was also being stirred up.
25:33 The Lord would slay people in all parts of the world during this judgment. So many people would die that they would lie on the ground unburied like manure (cf. Rev. 14:20).
25:34 Leaders of peoples then should mourn and weep because the day of their destruction and the dispersion of their nations had come. In this judgment the shepherds would die along with the sheep. Like a choice piece of pottery these nations would fall and break apart.
25:35-37 The leaders would not be able to escape the judgment but would weep and wail over their fate. They would bewail the fact that Yahweh was destroying their nations in His fierce anger (cf. Rev. 16:8-11).
25:38 The Lord would leave His place of obscurity and attack His enemies like a lion (cf. v. 30; Rev. 19:11-21). The earth would become a devastation because the Divine Warrior would vent His fury.
This is the end of the collection of prophecies that were warnings of judgment on Judah and Jerusalem (chs. 2-25).
