Jeremia 13:12

How the Lord will destroy His degenerate people, and how they may yet escape the impending ruin. - Jer 13:12. "And speak unto them this word: Thus hath Jahveh the God of Israel said, Every jar is filled with wine. And when they say to thee, Know we not that every jar is filled with wine? Jer 13:13. Then say to them: Thus hath Jahve said: Behold, I fill all inhabitants of this land - the kings that sit for David upon his throne, and the priests, and the prophets, and all inhabitants of Jerusalem - with drunkenness, Jer 13:14. And dash them one against another, the fathers and the sons together, saith Jahve; I will not spare, nor pity, nor have mercy, not to destroy them. - Jer 13:15. Hear ye and give ear! Be not proud, for Jahveh speaketh. Jer 13:16. Give to Jahveh, your God, honour, ere He bring darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the mountains of dusk, and ye look for light, but He turn it into the shadow of death and make it darkness. Jer 13:17. But if ye hear it not, then in concealment shall my soul weep for the pride, and weep and run down shall mine eye with tears, because the flock of Jahve is carried away captive." To give emphasis to the threatening conveyed in the symbolical action, the kind and manner of the destruction awaiting them is forcibly set before the various ranks in Judah and Jerusalem by the interpretation, in Jer 13:12-14, of a proverbial saying and the application of it to them. The circumstantial way in which the figurative saying is brought in in Jer 13:12, is designed to call attention to its import. נבל, an earthenware vessel, especially the wine jar (cf. Isa 30:24; Lam 4:2), is here the emblem of man; cf. Jer 18:6; Isa 29:16. We must not, as Ng. does, suppose the similar to be used because such jars are an excellent emblem of that c…

Here is, I. A judgment threatened against this people that would quite intoxicate them. This doom is pronounced against them in a figure, to make it the more taken notice of and the more affecting (Jer 13:12): Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, every bottle shall be filled with wine; that is, those that by their sins have made themselves vessels of wrath fitted to destruction shall be filled with the wrath of God as a bottle is with wine; and, as every vessel of mercy prepared for glory shall be filled with mercy and glory, so they shall be full of the fury of the Lord (Isa 51:20); and they shall be brittle as bottles; and, like old bottles into which new wine is put, they shall burst and be broken to pieces, Mat 9:17. Or, They shall have their heads as full of wine as bottle are; for so it is explained, Jer 13:13, They shall be filled with drunkenness; compare Isa 51:17. It is probable that this was a common proverb among them, applied in various ways; but they, not being aware of the prophet's meaning in it, ridiculed him for it: "Do we not certainly know that every bottle shall be filled with wine? What strange thing is there in that? Tell us something that we did not know before." Perhaps they were thus touchy with the prophet because they apprehended this to be a reflection upon them for their drunkenness, and probably it was in part so intended. They loved flagons of wine, Hos 3:1. Their watchmen were all for wine, Isa 56:12. They loved their false prophets that prophesied to them of wine (Mic 2:11), that bade them be merry, for that they should never want their bottle to make them so. "Well," says the prophet, "you shall have your bottles full of wine, but not such wine as you desire." They suspected that he had some mystical meaning in it which prophesied no goo…

13:12-14 Of course! The people assumed that the Lord would continue to bless them as he had in the past (Ps 104:15; Prov 9:2-5). However, the wine was not a symbol of blessing; in this case, drunkenness symbolized God’s wrath (cp. Rev 14:10).