What Does Jeremiah 25:28 Mean in the King James?
And it shall be, if they refuse to take the cup at thine hand to drink, then shalt thou say unto them, Thus saith the LORD of hosts; Ye shall certainly drink.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The cup is not an invitation: the verse says refusal cannot keep it from being drunk.
THE MEANING
You meet a portion that refusal cannot make disappear; the verse names its force without disguising coercion. The doubled Hebrew verb makes the certainty audible: you will surely drink. The cup is in another’s hand, and the answer is compulsion.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that refusing a consequence always makes it disappear.
THE ROOT
שָׁתוֹ תִשְׁתּוּן
shāṯō tištûn
GROWS FROM
שתה
sh-t-h
Drink, consume liquid; here the phrase means “drink, you will drink,” intensified as “you will surely drink.”
The Hebrew places the infinitive absolute שָׁתוֹ (shāṯō, “drinking”) before תִשְׁתּוּן (tištûn, “you will drink”), making certainty audible. The same root forms a word for a drinking feast, but here the cup is a forced portion.
ALSO GROWS
shātāh: He drank; a finite form of the verb “drink.”
שָׁתָה
This form shows the root’s ordinary action, repeated here with force until drinking is declared certain.
mishteh: A feast or banquet, especially a drinking occasion.
מִשְׁתֶּה
The same root can name drinking at a feast; here that act becomes an imposed portion rather than a celebration.
לָקַחַת
lāqaḥat
GROWS FROM
לקח
l-q-ḥ
Take, receive; לָקַחַת here means “to take” the cup.
The refusal begins at the point of receiving: they refuse to take the cup before they refuse to drink. Another noun from this root, לֶקַח (leqaḥ, “instruction” or “learning”), carries the sense of taking something in, sharpening the image of the cup as a portion that enters the receiver.
ALSO GROWS
lāqaḥ: Take, receive.
לָקַח
The cup is in someone’s hand, and the first resistance is to receiving what is placed there.
leqaḥ: Instruction, learning; what is taken in.
לֶקַח
This related noun brings out the root’s sense of intake: what is received enters and shapes the receiver, as the cup’s contents do.
THE PATTERN
The cup names a portion someone must undergo: it can be poured out, received, or imposed.
For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup, and the wine is red; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same: but the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth shall wring them out, and drink them.Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:THE THREAD
For thus saith the LORD; Behold, they whose judgment was not to drink of the cup have assuredly drunken; and art thou he that shall altogether go unpunished? thou shalt not go unpunished, but thou shalt surely drink of it.The same Hebrew root שׁתה (sh-t-h, “drink”) drives both verses, and Jeremiah 49:12 uses the same emphatic “surely drink” construction. Its wording says that even those not expected to drink have done so, making explicit how refusal fails to erase the portion.
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