The Cup of the Lord's Fury

The Lord hands Jeremiah “the wine cup of this fury” and sends him to make nations drink (Jer. 25:15). Judah drinks first, then the nations, and last Babylon, which had itself been a cup in the Lord’s hand. In Jeremiah no one may refuse the cup. In a latter-day revelation the Lord says He drank “the bitter cup” so that those who repent “might not suffer” (D&C 19:16–18); this page sets the two side by side.

The cup handed round

Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it. … Then took I the cup at the LORD’s hand, and made all the nations to drink… To wit, Jerusalem, and the cities of Judah. (Jer. 25:15; Jer. 25:17–18)

“Beginning in Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, the bitter cup will be drunk by Egypt, the nations of the west and east, and Babylonia.”¹ The image is already in the book: the Lord will fill “the kings that sit upon David’s throne, and the priests, and the prophets, and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, with drunkenness” (Jer. 13:13). See Jeremiah 13 and Jeremiah 25.

No one may refuse

“if they refuse to take the cup at thine hand to drink, then shalt thou say unto them… Ye shall certainly drink. For, lo, I begin to bring evil on the city which is called by my name” (Jer. 25:28–29). To Edom: “they whose judgment was not to drink of the cup have assuredly drunken… thou shalt surely drink of it” (Jer. 49:12).

Babylon, the cup and the drinker

The list ends: “the king of Sheshach shall drink after them” (Jer. 25:26). “Sheshach” is cross-referenced to Jer. 51:41,² where the two names sit side by side: “How is Sheshach taken!… how is Babylon become an astonishment among the nations!”

Babylon is also the cup: “Babylon hath been a golden cup in the LORD’s hand, that made all the earth drunken: the nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad” (Jer. 51:7). Babylon is the cup “by bold metaphor.”³ The Hebrew verb for “mad” here is the one in Jer. 25:16, where the nations who drink the cup “be mad.”⁴

Then Babylon drinks. She “made all the earth drunken,” and with the same Hebrew verb the Lord says of her, “I will make them drunken, that they may rejoice, and sleep a perpetual sleep” (Jer. 51:39); “I will make drunk her princes, and her wise men, her captains, and her rulers, and her mighty men” (Jer. 51:57).⁴ John’s Revelation has the same turn: “great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath” (Rev. 16:19). See Jeremiah 51.

The cup of the wrath of God

King Benjamin says that “they have drunk out of the cup of the wrath of God, which justice could no more deny unto them than it could deny that Adam should fall” (Mosiah 3:26); the cross-reference on “cup” leads back to Jer. 25:15.² The Lord says, “the cup of mine indignation is full; for behold, my blood shall not cleanse them if they hear me not” (D&C 29:17); “cup” again leads to Jer. 25:15, and “blood” leads to D&C 19:17.² From Jeremiah’s cup these cross-references run to the wrath the unrepentant drink, and from there to D&C 19.

The cup He drank

The Savior speaks of a cup too. In Gethsemane He prays, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matt. 26:39); at His arrest He asks, “the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” (John 18:11); and at Bountiful He introduces Himself: “I have drunk out of that bitter cup which the Father hath given me, and have glorified the Father in taking upon me the sins of the world” (3 Ne. 11:11). These verses carry no footnote to Jeremiah, but the Church’s edition reaches him in two steps: D&C 19:17 points to D&C 29:17, the cup of indignation, and that verse points to Jer. 25:15.² One Latter-day Saint reading hears in 3 Ne. 11:11 “an old title used by ancient Israelite prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah”: the speaker “was the one who had taken their cup.”⁵

Jeremiah does not speak of the Savior; what follows is this page’s comparison. The nations who refuse the cup are told, “Ye shall certainly drink” (Jer. 25:28). The Son asks that the cup pass, then takes it: “shall I not drink it?” The Lord says what His drinking means for the rest:

I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent; But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I; Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink. (D&C 19:16–18)

Sources

1. Chapter 24: The Babylonian Captivity (Jeremiah 20–22; 24–29; 32; 34–45; 52; Lamentations), Old Testament Student Manual: 1 Kings–Malachi (2003). ↩
2. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
3. Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906. ↩
4. Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. ↩ ↩
5. Kevin L. Tolley, “Christ and the Cup”, in Book of Mormon Insights: Letting God Prevail in Your Life, ed. Kenneth L. Alford, Krystal V. L. Pierce, and Mary Jane Woodger (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book), 242–53. ↩