Jeremiah 25:18 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Bible Comments

Judgment usually beginneth at the house of God, 1 Peter 4:17. God hath more known them and done them more good than other people, therefore their sins are higher provocations, and they are less excusable. By the kings here mentioned are to be understood Jehoiakim, Jehoiachin, and Zedekiah; these princes with their people God threatens to punish to astonishment, and so as men should mock at them, and curse them; which expressions we have before met with in the same cause. But here ariseth a doubt how the prophet saith, as it is this day, whereas this prophecy, Jeremiah 25:1, was in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, but Jerusalem was not made such a desolation till the eleventh year of Zedekiah, which was eighteen years after. Some think that though the thing were yet to come, yet the prophet speaketh of it as past, because of the certainty of it, which is but what is ordinary in the prophetical writings. Others think that these words were added after the captivity of Jeremiah, writing over his former prophecies. Others from these words judge that this part of the chapter was a prophecy at some other time following what was in the beginning of this chapter. Others think that he adds these words because the carrying into captivity was at this time begun, though not completed until the eleventh year of Zedekiah.

Jeremiah 25:18

18 To wit, Jerusalem, and the cities of Judah, and the kings thereof, and the princes thereof, to make them a desolation, an astonishment, an hissing, and a curse; as it is this day;