Jeremiah 25:15 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Take the wine-cup, &c.— Take the cup of the wine of this wrath. There can be no doubt that what is here related passed in vision, and that Jeremiah relates simply what was represented to his view; which, putting into writing, he sent to the several nations where God ordered him to publish it. See the note on chap. Jeremiah 13:4. Those circumstances which constitute the good and evil of human life are often represented in Scripture as the ingredients of a cup, which God, as master of a feast, mixes up, and distributes to the several guests, as he thinks fit. Hence when our Saviour asks his disciples James and John, whether they were able to drink of the cup which he was to drink of, he means, whether they had resolution and patience to undergo the like sufferings and afflictions as his Father had allotted for him. Matthew 20:22. And in the like sense he prays, Matthew 26:39, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Accordingly by this image of "the cup of the wine of God's wrath" we are to understand those dreadful and afflictive judgments, which an incensed God was about to inflict on the objects of his displeasure. And Jeremiah the prophet, who announced them, is considered as acting the part of a cupbearer, carrying the cup round to those who were appointed to drink of it; the effects of which were to appear in the intoxication, that is, the terror and astonishment, the confusion and desolation, which should prevail among them. See Bishop Lowth's note on Isaiah 51:21 and compare Revelation 14:10; Revelation 16:19.