Jeremiah 25:14

For many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of them also: and I will recompense them according to their deeds, and according to the works of their own hands.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(14) Shall serve themselves of them.—Better, shall make them their servants. The English “serve themselves” (a Gallicism in common use in the seventeenth century), which occurs again in Jeremiah 27:7, is now ambiguous, and hardly conveys the force of the original. What is meant is that the law of retribution will in due time be seen in its action upon those who were now masters of the world. The thought is the same as that expressed in the familiar “Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit” of Horace (Ep II. i., 156).

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

25:8-14 The fixing of the time during which the Jewish captivity should last, would not only confirm the prophecy, but also comfort the people of God, and encourage faith and prayer. The ruin of Babylon is foretold: the rod will be thrown into the fire when the correcting work is done. When the set time to favour Zion is come, Babylon shall be punished for their iniquity, as other nations have been punished for their sins. Every threatening of the Scripture will certainly be accomplished.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Shall serve themselves of them also - i. e., shall impose forced labor upon the Chaldaeans, and reduce them also to servitude.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

14. serve themselves—(Jer 27:7; 30:8; 34:10). Avail themselves of their services as slaves.

them also—the Chaldees, who heretofore have made other nations their slaves, shall themselves also in their turn be slaves to them. Maurer translates, "shall impose servitude on them, even them."

recompense them—namely, the Chaldees and other nations against whom Jeremiah had prophesied (Jer 25:13), as having oppressed the Jews.

their deeds—rather, "deed," namely, their bad treatment of the Jews (Jer 50:29; 51:6, 24; compare 2Ch 36:17).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

God threateneth the destruction of that monarchy by the Persians, according to the prophecy of this prophet, and declareth that their destruction was of themselves, God did but recompense unto them their own deeds, and the works of their hands; which is not to be restrained to their excesses in executing Divine vengeance, and the cruelty they used to the Israelites, but more generally interpreted of all their wicked courses.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

For many nations and great kings shall serve themselves of them also,.... Take their cities, seize upon the kingdoms, spoil them of their wealth and riches, and bring them into servitude to them: these "many nations", which should and did do all this, were the Medes and Persians, and those that were subject to them, or were their allies and auxiliaries in this expedition; and the "great kings" were Cyrus and Darius, and those that were confederate with them:

and I will recompense them according to their deeds, and according to the works of their own hands; as they have done to others, it shall be done to them; as they have served themselves of other nations, other nations shall serve themselves of them; as they have cruelly used others, they shall be used with cruelty themselves; and as they have made other countries desolate, their land shall become desolate also; not only their tyranny and cruelty, but all their other sins, shall receive a just recompence of reward.

Geneva Study Bible

For many nations and great kings shall be {l} served by them also: and I will recompense them according to their deeds, and according to the works of their own hands.

(l) That is of the Babylonians as in Jer 27:7.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

14. shall serve themselves of them, even of them] lit. shall work by (means of) them, i.e. shall use them as slaves. As the Chaldaeans have done to the people of God, so shall He requite them.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 14. - For many nations... shall serve themselves of them else; i.e. put forced labor upon them also. The same phrase is used of the conduct of the Egyptians to the Israelites (Exodus 1:14). Of them also; and "also" suggests that the calamity of the Chaldeans is a retribution (comp. Isaiah 66:4), as the next clause, in harmony with Jeremiah 50:29, 51:24, emphatically declares. Jeremiah 25:14

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The perfect עבדוּ is to be regarded as a prophetic present. עבד בּ, impose labour, servitude on one, cf. Jeremiah 22:13, i.e., reduce one to servitude. גּם המּה is an emphatic repetition of the pronoun בּם, cf. Gesen. 121, 3. Upon them, too (the Chaldeans), shall many peoples and great kings impose service, i.e., they shall make the Chaldeans bondsmen, reduce them to subjection. With "I will requite them," cf. Jeremiah 50:29; Jeremiah 51:24, where this idea is repeatedly expressed.

(Note: Jeremiah 25:11-14 are pronounced by Hitz., Ew., Graf to be spurious and interpolated; but Hitz. excepts the second half of Jeremiah 25:14, and proposes to set it immediately after the first half of Jeremiah 25:11. Their main argument is the dogmatic prejudice, that in the fourth year of Jehoiakim Jeremiah could not have foretold the fall of Babylon after seventy years' domination. The years foretold, says Hitz., "would coincide by all but two years, or, if Darius the Mede be a historical person, perhaps quite entirely. Such correspondence between history and prophecy would be a surprising accident, or else Jeremiah must have known beforehand the number of years during which the subjection to Babylon would last." Now the seventy years of Babylon's sovereignty are mentioned against in Jeremiah 29:10, where Jeremiah promises the exiles that after seventy years they shall return to their native land, and no doubt is thrown by the above-mentioned critics on this statement; but there the seventy years are said to be a so-called round number, because that prophecy was composed nine years later than the present one. But on the other hand, almost all comm. have remarked that the utterance of Jeremiah 29:10 : "when as for Babylon seventy years are accomplished, will I visit you," points directly back to the prophecy before us (25), and so gives a testimony to the genuineness of our 11th verse. And thus at the same time the assertion is disposed of, that in Jeremiah 29:10 the years given are a round number; for it is not there said that seventy years will be accomplished from the time of that letter addressed by the prophet to those in Babylon, but the terminus a quo of the seventy years is assumed as known already from the present twenty-fifth chap. - The other arguments brought forward by Hitz. against the genuineness of the verse have already been pronounced inconclusive by Ng. Nevertheless Ng. himself asserts the spuriousness, not indeed of Jeremiah 25:11 (the seventy years' duration of Judah's Babylonian bondage), but of Jeremiah 25:12-14, and on the following grounds: - 1. Although in Jeremiah 25:11, and below in Jeremiah 25:26, it is indicated that Babylon itself will not be left untouched by the judgment of the Lord, yet (he says) it is incredible that in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the prophet could have spoken of the fall of Babylon in such a full and emphatic manner as is the case in Jeremiah 25:12-14. But no obvious reason can be discovered why this should be incredible. For though in Jeremiah 25:26 Jeremiah makes use of the name Sheshach for Babylon, it does not hence follow that at that moment he desired to speak of it only in a disguised manner. In the statement that the Jews should serve the king of Babylon seventy years, it was surely clearly enough implied that after the seventy years Babylon's sovereignty should come to an end. Still less had Jeremiah occasion to fear that the announcement of the fall of Babylon after seventy years would confirm the Jews in their defiant determination not to be tributary to Babylon. The prophets of the Lord did not suffer themselves to be regulated in their prophesyings by such reasons of human expediency. - 2. Of more weight are his other two arguments. Jeremiah 25:12 and Jeremiah 25:13 presume the existence of the prophecy against Babylon, Jeremiah 50 and 51, which was not composed till the fourth year of Zedekiah; and the second half of Jeremiah 25:13 presumes the existence of the other prophecies against the nations, and that too as a ספר. And although the greater number of these prophecies are older than the time of the battle at Carchemish, yet we may see (says Ng.) from the relation of apposition in which the second half of Jeremiah 25:13 stands to the first, that here that Sepher against the peoples is meant in which the prophecy against Babylon was already contained. But from all this nothing further follows than that the words: "all that is written in this book and that Jeremiah prophesied against the peoples," were not uttered by Jeremiah in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, but were first appended at the editing of the prophecies or the writing of them down in the book which has come down to us. The demonstrative הזּה does by no means show that he who wrote it regarded the present passage, namely Jeremiah 25, as belonging to the Sepher against the peoples, or that the prophecies against the peoples must have stood in immediate connection with Jeremiah 25. It only shows that the prophecies against the peoples too were found in the book which contained Jeremiah 25. Again, it is true that the first half of Jeremiah 25:14 occurs again somewhat literally in Jeremiah 27:7; but we do not at all see in this reliable evidence that Jeremiah could not have written Jeremiah 25:14. Ng. founds this conclusion mainly on the allegation that the perf. עבדוּ is wrong, whereas in Jeremiah 27:7 it is joined regularly by ו consec. to the indication of time which precedes. But the perfect is here to be regarded as the prophetic present, marking the future as already accomplished in the divine counsel; just as in Jeremiah 27:6 the categorical נתתּי represents as accomplished that which in reality yet awaited its fulfilment. Accordingly we regard none of these arguments as conclusive. On the other hand, the fact that the Alexandrian translators have rendered Jeremiah 25:12 and Jeremiah 25:13, and have made the last clause of Jeremiah 25:13 the heading to the oracles against the peoples, furnishes an unexceptionable testimony to the genuineness of all three verses. Nor is this testimony weakened by the omission in that translation of Jeremiah 25:14; for this verse could not but be omitted when the last clause of Jeremiah 25:13 had been taken as a heading, since the contents of Jeremiah 25:14 were incompatible with that view.)