translation_id: net-engnet

book_id: JER

label: NET study note

text: The year referred to would be 605 b.c. Jehoiakim had been placed on the throne of Judah as a puppet king by Pharaoh Necho after the defeat of Josiah at Megiddo in 609 b.c. ( 2 Kgs 23:34-35 ). According to Jer 46:2 Nebuchadnezzar defeated Necho at Carchemish in that same year. After defeating Necho, Nebuchadnezzar had hurried back to Babylon where he was made king. After being made king he then returned to Judah and attacked Jerusalem ( Dan 1:1 . The date given there is the third year of Jehoiakim but scholars are generally agreed that the dating there is based on a different system than the one here. It did not count the part of the year before New Year’s day as an official part of the king’s official rule. Hence, the third year there is the fourth year here.) The identity of the foe from the north referred to in general terms ( 4:6; 6:1; 15:12 ) now becomes clear.


text: The year referred to would be 627 b.c . The same year is referred to in 1:2 in reference to his call to be a prophet.


text: The many allusions to trouble coming from the north are now clarified: it is the armies of Babylon which included within it contingents from many nations. See 1:14, 15; 4:6; 6:1, 22; 10:22; 13:20 for earlier allusions.


text: Nebuchadnezzar is called the Lord ’s servant also in Jer 27:6; 43:10 . He was the Lord ’s servant in that he was the agent used by the Lord to punish his disobedient people. Assyria was earlier referred to as the Lord ’s “rod” ( Isa 10:5-6 ) and Cyrus is called his “shepherd” and his “anointed” ( Isa 44:28; 45:1 ). P. C. Craigie, P. H. Kelley, and J. F. Drinkard ( Jeremiah 1-25 [WBC], 364) make the interesting observation that the terms here are very similar to the terms in v. 4 . The people of Judah ignored the servants, the prophets, he sent to turn them away from evil. So he will send other servants whom they cannot ignore.


text: The Hebrew word translated “everlasting” is the word often translated “eternal.” However, it sometimes has a more limited time reference. For example it refers to the lifetime of a person who became a “lasting slave” to another person (see Exod 21:6 ; Deut 15:17 ). It is also used to refer to the long life wished for a king ( 1 Kgs 1:31 ; Neh 2:3 ). The time frame here is to be qualified at least with reference to Judah and Jerusalem as seventy years (see 29:10-14 and compare v. 12 ).


text: Compare Jer 7:24 and 16:9 for this same dire prediction limited to Judah and Jerusalem.


text: The sound of people grinding meal and the presence of lamps shining in their houses were signs of everyday life. The Lord is going to make these lands desolate (v. 11 ) destroying all signs of life. (The statement is, of course, hyperbolic or poetic exaggeration; even after the destruction of Jerusalem many people were left in the land.) For these same descriptions of everyday life applying to the end of life see the allegory in Eccl 12:3-6 .


text: It should be noted that the text says that the nations will be subject to the king of Babylon for seventy years, not that they will lie desolate for seventy years. Though several proposals have been made for dating this period, many ignore this fact. This most likely refers to the period beginning with Nebuchadnezzar’s defeat of Pharaoh Necho at Carchemish in 605 b.c. and the beginning of his rule over Babylon. At this time Babylon became the dominant force in the area and continued to be so until the fall of Babylon in 538 b.c . More particularly Judah became a vassal state (cf. Jer 46:2 ; 2 Kgs 24:1 ) in 605 b.c. and was allowed to return to her homeland in 538 when Cyrus issued his edict allowing all the nations exiled by Babylon to return to their homelands. (See 2 Chr 36:21 and Ezra 1:2-4 ; the application there is made to Judah but the decree of Cyrus was broader.)


text: “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 .


text: See further Jer 46:2-28 for the judgment against Egypt.


text: The land of Uz was Job’s homeland ( Job 1:1 ). The exact location is unknown but its position here between Egypt and the Philistine cities suggests it is south of Judah, probably in the Arabian peninsula. Lam 4:21 suggests that it was near Edom.


text: See further Jer 47:1-7 for the judgment against the Philistines. The Philistine cities were west of Judah.


text: The Greek historian Herodotus reports that Ashdod had been destroyed under the Pharaoh who preceded Necho, Psammetichus.


text: See further Jer 49:7-22 for the judgment against Edom. Edom, Moab, and Ammon were east of Judah.


text: See further Jer 48:1-47 for the judgment against Moab.


text: See further Jer 49:1-6 for the judgment against Ammon.


text: Tyre and Sidon are mentioned within the judgment on the Philistines in Jer 47:4 . They were Phoenician cities to the north and west of Judah on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in what is now Lebanon. map For location see Map1-A1 ; JP3-F3 ; JP4-F3 .


text: The connection with Tyre and Sidon suggests that these were Phoenician colonies. See also Isa 23:2 .


text: Dedan and Tema are mentioned together in Isa 21:13-14 and located in the desert. They were located in the northern part of the Arabian peninsula south and east of Ezion Geber. Buz is not mentioned anywhere else and its location is unknown. Judgment against Dedan and Tema is mentioned in conjunction with the judgment on Edom in Jer 47:7-8.


text: The kingdom of Zimri is mentioned nowhere else, so its location is unknown.


text: See further Jer 49:34-39 for judgment against Elam.


text: Elam and Media were east of Babylon; Elam in the south and Media in the north. They were in what is now western Iran.


text: The word used here ( Heb “his habitation”) refers to the land of Canaan which the Lord chose to make his earthly dwelling ( Exod 15:13 ) and which was the dwelling place of his chosen people ( Jer 10:25 ; Isa 32:18 ). Judgment would begin at the “house of God” (v. 29 ; 1 Pet 4:17 ) but would extend to the rest of the earth (v. 29 ).


text: The metaphor shifts from God as a lion to God as a mighty warrior ( Jer 20:11 ; Isa 42:13 ; Zeph 3:17 ) shouting in triumph over his foes. Within the metaphor is a simile where the warrior is compared to a person stomping on grapes to remove the juice from them in the making of wine. The figure will be invoked later in a battle scene where the sounds of joy in the grape harvest are replaced by the sounds of joy of the enemy soldiers ( Jer 48:33 ). The picture is drawn in more gory detail in Isa 63:1-6 .


text: The intent here is to emphasize the large quantity of those who are killed – there will be too many to insure proper mourning rites and proper burial.