Jeremiah 25 is the twenty-fifth chapter of the Book of Jeremiah in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. This book contains prophecies attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, and is one of the Books of the Prophets. Chapter 25 is the final chapter in the first section of the Book of Jeremiah, which deals with the earliest and main core of Jeremiah's message. In this chapter, Jeremiah identified the length of the time of exile as seventy years.
The order of chapters and verses of the Book of Jeremiah in the English Bibles, Masoretic Text, and Vulgate, in some places differs from that in Septuagint according to Rahlfs or Brenton. The following table is taken with minor adjustments from Brenton's Septuagint, page 971. The order of Computer Assisted Tools for Septuagint/Scriptural Study based on Alfred Rahlfs' Septuaginta, differs in some details from Joseph Ziegler's critical edition in Göttingen LXX. Swete's Introduction mostly agrees with Rahlfs' edition.
The parashah sections listed here are based on the Aleppo Codex. Jeremiah 25 contains the Ninth prophecy in the section of Prophecies of Destruction . : open parashah; : closed parashah.
Verse 1
The "word of the Lord" in Jeremiah 36:1 also came to Jeremiah "in the fourth year of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah". The bracketed words, "which was the first year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon", are doubted to be original as they are not included in the Septuagint.
Verse 2
The message concerned all the people and was therefore delivered to all the people, proclaimed without fear by Jeremiah.
"Even to this day": that is the fourth year of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, so since "the thirteenth year of Josiah", it was "the 23th year" of persistent proclaiming God's Word by Jeremiah.
Verse 11
"These nations": Judah and the surrounding nations, such as Moab and Phoenicia.
"Seventy years": may represent "the length of lifetime". The seventy years of serving the king of Babylon began circa 605 BC and ended circa 536 BC
Verse 12
Cross reference:, ; ;
"Seventy years": Circa 605-536 BC.
The announcement of the Judah's punishment at the hand of foreign nations must have puzzled Jeremiah's audience, as also become the subject of questions by Habakkuk, but verse 12 is to put it to rest by stating that after God have used Babylon to punish His people, He would punish Babylon for its sins.
Verse 13
According to biblical commentator A. W. Streane, "at this point there presents itself one of the most marked discrepancies between the Septuagint Version of Jeremiah and the Hebrew. The Greek Version as it stands now ends the sentence with 'in this book', and reads as a new sentence, and title of the section on the nations, “What Jeremiah prophesied against the nations”. The Jerusalem Bible ends the first 25 chapters of Jeremiah here: and the second part of the verse: starts a new section and acts as the start of "a sort of preface to the oracle against the nations", which is located in chapters 46-51, drawing on the dividing point seen in the Septuagint.
