Jeremiah 25:15
For thus saith the LORD God of Israel unto me; Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it. For thus saith the LORD God of Israel unto me; Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it.
The chapter belongs to the very beginning of the Babylonian captivity, coming very soon after that captivity opened. More than sixty years afterward, in the first year of Darius the Mede, it was prayerfully studied by Daniel.
The wine cup is a picture of pronounced doom as draining a cup filled with divine wrath. It was given in that pictured form because the multitudes hearing could scarcely grasp its terrible meaning and needed a deeper impression made upon them.
Jerusalem with the cities of Judah and its kings were to be among the first to drink this cup of woe. Next in turn would drink Pharaoh king of Egypt with his servants and princes and all his people, and after them many other nations of earth, drinking one after another until God's purpose was fulfilled.
The chapter plainly fixes the desolations of Jerusalem at seventy years. With that number it joins the sure promise of the return of the exiles. The seventy years were understood from it, yet how the seventy years of captivity related to the twenty-three hundred years to elapse before the cleansing of the sanctuary remained not understood.