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).
Related Commentaries of Jeremiah 25:14
Jeremiah 25:14
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.