Jeremiah 25:7, commentary and pictures

The verse is a message of reproof charging Judah with continually refusing to hearken to God despite repeated counsel and warnings. Its tone is pleading, with God entreating His people not to provoke Him to anger. The provoking works of their hands, including their hearts, were idolatrous deeds and evil actions. By those deeds they brought harm upon themselves.

Their refusal brought the predicted captivity, with the Chaldeans used as God's instrument to chastise His disobedient people. That punishment as chastisement was proportionate to the light, intelligence, and warnings they had received and despised. God in mercy long delayed His judgments because He was unwilling to humiliate His chosen people, and He sent the visitation of His displeasure as a last effort to check them in their evil course and turn them from evil. The surrounding prophecy fixed the captivity at seventy years, so that by the first year of Darius, Daniel understood from it that the period was drawing near its close.

The verse applies in the present on the same principle, for God has instituted no new plan to preserve the purity of His people. He still entreats erring professors to repent and turn from evil ways, predicts dangers before them by His chosen servants, and reproves sin as faithfully as in Jeremiah's day, while modern Israel faces the same temptation to scorn reproof, hate counsel, and turn a deaf ear. Toward those who now reject reproof, retribution in mercy may be withheld for a time, but it will not be withheld forever. He will not always stay His hand but will visit iniquity with righteous judgment.