Jeremiah 25:34
Howl, ye shepherds, and cry; and wallow yourselves in the ashes, ye principal of the flock: for the days of your slaughter and of your dispersions are accomplished; and ye shall fall like a pleasant vessel. Howl, ye shepherds, and cry; and wallow yourselves in the ashes, ye principal of the flock: for the days of your slaughter and of your dispersions are accomplished; and ye shall fall like a pleasant vessel.
Jeremiah 25 belongs with Jeremiah 27-31 as testimony given very soon after the beginning of the Babylonian captivity concerning the restoration of Israel and the sure promise of return after seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem. It was written down in a book as a plain record. More than sixty years afterward, in the first year of Darius the Mede when Jerusalem's seventy-year captivity was nearing its close, Daniel recalled it and prayerfully studied it and prayed for the desolate sanctuary. From it Daniel knew the promise of return was sure, yet he could not understand how the seventy years of captivity related to the twenty-three hundred years to pass before the cleansing of the sanctuary.
In its original setting it is God's clearly pronounced sentence of doom on the shepherds and principal of the flock, whose awful import the multitudes who heard could scarcely understand. It announces swift-coming judgments of slaughter and dispersion. Its meaning was illustrated by the draining of a cup filled with the wine of divine wrath, drunk first by Jerusalem and the cities and kings of Judah and then by Pharaoh king of Egypt and many other nations until God's purpose was fulfilled. Its fall like a pleasant vessel means the dashing to pieces of a potter's earthen bottle in the valley of the son of Hinnom, showing that God would break the people and the city so that it cannot be made whole again, because they hardened their necks so as not to hear His words.
The shepherds and principal of the flock are ministers and leaders who mislead God's people, and the verse warns that they must howl and mourn because the days of their slaughter and scattering are accomplished and they will have no way to flee or escape. Their misleading work is to sacrifice truth to gain human approval, to give false assurance, and to lead people to trust in a false refuge of error. They will see the ruin their teaching has brought and will be held accountable for it.