Attributed commentary excerpt
Keil & Delitzsch on Jeremiah 25:14
A historical reference excerpt for this verse. Read it alongside the biblical text and other available sources.
Commentary on the Old Testament
C. F. Keil & F. Delitzsch · 19th-century historical commentary
Source: BibleWord.ai's local reference edition of this named work.
The perfect עבדוּ is to be regarded as a prophetic present. עבד בּ, impose labour, servitude on one, cf. Jer 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. Jer 50:29; Jer 51:24, where this idea is repeatedly expressed. (Note: Jer 25:11-14 are pronounced by Hitz., Ew., Graf to be spurious and interpolated; but Hitz. excepts the second half of Jer 25:14, and proposes to set it immediately after the first half of Jer 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 Jer 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 Jer 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 Jer 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 Jer 25:11 (the seventy years' duration of Judah's Babylonian bondage), but of Jer 25:12-14, and on the following grounds: - 1. Although in Jer 25:11, and below in Jer 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 Jer 25:12-14. But no obvious reason can be discovered why this should be incredible. For though in Jer 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 Babylo…
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