They will drink, and reel back and forth, and be insane, because of the sword that I will send among them.”
Parallel Translations
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They will drink, and reel back and forth, and be insane, because of the sword that I will send among them.”
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And they shall drink, and be moved, and be mad, because of the sword that I will send among them.
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And they shall drink, and reel to and fro, and be like madmen, because of the sword that I will send among them. —
Cross-references (11)
Passages linked to Jeremiah 25:16 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Jeremiah 51:7 Babylon has been a golden cup in Yahweh’s hand, who made all the earth drunk. The nations have drunk of her wine; therefore the nations have gone mad.
- Nahum 3:11 You also will be drunken. You will be hidden. You also will seek a stronghold because of the enemy.
- Jeremiah 25:27 “You shall tell them, ‘Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel says: “Drink, and be drunk, vomit, fall, and rise no more, because of the sword which I will send among you.” ’
- Jeremiah 51:39 When they are heated, I will make their feast, and I will make them drunk, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake up,” says Yahweh.
- Lamentations 4:21 Rejoice and be glad, daughter of Edom, that dwells in the land of Uz. The cup will pass through to you also. You will be drunken, and will make yourself naked.
- Ezekiel 23:32-34 “The Lord Yahweh says: ‘You will drink of your sister’s cup, which is deep and large. You will be ridiculed and held in derision. It contains much. You will be filled with drunkenness and sorrow, with the cup of astonishment and desolation, with the cup of your sister Samaria. You will even drink it and drain it out. You will gnaw the broken pieces of it, and will tear your breasts; for I have spoken it,’ says the Lord Yahweh.
- Revelation 14:10 he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is prepared unmixed in the cup of his anger. He will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb.
- Revelation 16:9-11 People were scorched with great heat, and people blasphemed the name of God who has the power over these plagues. They didn’t repent and give him glory. The fifth poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom was darkened. They gnawed their tongues because of the pain, and they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores. They didn’t repent of their works.
- Revelation 18:3 For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her sexual immorality, the kings of the earth committed sexual immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from the abundance of her luxury.”
- Lamentations 3:15 He has filled me with bitterness. He has stuffed me with wormwood.
- Revelation 14:8 Another, a second angel, followed, saying, “Babylon the great has fallen, which has made all the nations to drink of the wine of the wrath of her sexual immorality.”
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (9 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain Here the Prophet more fully shews what we have…
Here the Prophet more fully shews what we have before stated, that they were not vain terrors when he denounced God’s judgments on all nations, for we call those threatenings childish which are not accomplished. But the Prophet here declares that however obstinately the Jews and others might resist, they could not possibly escape God’s vengeance, as he was the judge of all. Hence the Prophet is bidden to take a cup and to give it to others. But the Jews might have still objected and said, “We may, indeed, take the cup from thine hand, but what if we refuse? what if we cast away from us what thou givest us to drink?” Hence the Prophet says that, willing or unwilling, they were to take the cup, that they might drink and exhaust whatever was destined for them by God’s judgment; he therefore says that they may drink
He then adds, that they may be incensed and become distracted These two words refer, no doubt, to the grievousness of their punishment; for he intimates that they would become, as it were, destitute of mind and reason. When God kindly chastises us, and with paternal moderation, we are then able with resignation to submit to him and to flee to his mercy; but when we make a clamor and are driven almost to madness, we then shew that an extreme rigor is felt, and that there is no hope of pardon. The Prophet, then, intended to express, that so atrocious would be the calamities of the nations with whom God was angry, that they would become stupified and almost insane; and at the same time frantic, for despair would lay hold on their minds and hearts, that they would not be able to entertain any hope of deliverance, or to submit to God, but that they would, as it is usual with the reprobate, rise up against God and vomit forth their blasphemies.
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He says, because of the sword that I will send among them. It appears from the word בינתם, bintem, “among them,” that there would be mutual conflicts, that they would destroy one another. God, then, would send his sword; but he would extend it now to the Chaldeans, then to the Egyptians; now to the Assyrians, then to other nations, so that with the same sword they would contend one with another, until at last it would prove a ruin to them all. It now follows, —
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Jer 25:16 And they shall drink, and be moved,…
Jer 25:16 And they shall drink, and be moved, and be mad, because of the sword that I will send among them.
Ver. 16. And be moved and be mad.] As men that are overcome by some hot and heady liquor, are mad drunk.
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Because of the sword that I shall send.] For it is God who puts the sword in commission, {Jer 47:6-7} and there it many times rideth circuit, as a judge, in scarlet. There are certain seasons, wherein, as the angel troubled the pool, so doth God the nations: and commonly when he doth it to one, he doth it to more, as here, and 2Ch 15:5-6, and as at this day in Europe.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Whether they will or no, they shall drink it,…
Whether they will or no, they shall drink it, and be disturbed, and be mad, and rage like men overcome with wine, because of those dreadful judgments which I shall send amongst them.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain And they shall drink, and be moved, and be…
And they shall drink, and be moved, and be mad,.... The judgments foretold shall come upon them, whether they will or not; which will have such effects upon them, as intoxicating liquor has on drunken persons; make them shake and tremble, and reel to and fro, and toss and tumble about, and behave like madmen:
because of the sword that I will send among them; this explains what is meant by the wine cup of fury, the sword of a foreign enemy that shall enter among them and destroy; and which would make them tremble, and be at their wits' end, like drunken and mad men.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Be moved - Rather, stagger.
Be moved - Rather, stagger.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain be moved--reel (Nah 3:11).
be moved--reel (Nah 3:11).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (16) They shall drink . . .—The words describe…
(16) They shall drink . . .—The words describe what history has often witnessed, the panic-terror of lesser nations before the onward march of a great conqueror—they are as if stricken with a drunken madness, and their despair or their resistance is equally infatuated. The imagery is one familiar in earlier prophets. (Isa_51:17; Isa_51:22; Hab_2:16; Psa_60:5; Psa_75:8; Eze_23:31.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain And be moved, and be mad; rather, and reel…
And be moved, and be mad; rather, and reel to and fro, and behave themselves madly. The inspired writers do not scruple to ascribe all phenomena, the "bad" as well as the "good," to a Divine operation. "Shall there be evil in a city, and Jehovah hath not done it?". (Amo_3:6) "An evil spirit from Elohim came upon Saul, and he became frenzied". (1Sa_18:10; see also Isa_19:14 Isa_29:10 1Ki_22:19-23, and especially the very remarkable prologue of the Book of Job) To understand this form of expression, we must remember the strength of the reaction experienced by the prophets against the polytheism of the surrounding nations. It was not open to them to account for the existence of evil by ascribing it to the activity of various divinities; they knew Jehovah to be the sole cause in the universe. To us, "sicklied o"er with the pale cast of thought," such a doctrine occasions "great searchings of heart," and is sometimes a sore trial of our faith. But the prophets were not logicians, and their faith, compared to ours, was as an oak tree to a sapling; hence they can generally (see, however, Isa_63:17) express the truth of the universal causation of Jehovah with perfect tranquility. Because of the sword. Here Jeremiah deserts the figure of the Cup, and, as most commentators think, uses the language of fact. It is not, however, certain that "the sword" means that of God"s human instruments; Jehovah himself has a sword, (Jer_46:10 Jer_47:6 Jer_50:35-38 Isa_27:1 Isa_34:5; and elsewhere) just as he has a hand (Isa_8:11 Isa_59:1) and an arm. (Isa_40:10 Isa_53:1) All these belong to a group of childlike symbolic expressions for the manifestation of the Deity. Jehovah"s "sword" is described more fully in Gen_3:24; it "turns hither and thither," like the lightning a striking figure of the completeness with which God performs his work of vengeance (see also on ver. 27).
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 25:16 Upon drinking from the cup (25:15), the nations…
25:16 Upon drinking from the cup (25:15), the nations would stagger as though drunken. They would be crazed by the warfare and would thus be unable to protect themselves. They would feel hopeless and helpless, and in their confusion, they would panic.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.