Bible Strands
Jeremiah 25:11
And this whole land will become a desolate wasteland, and these nations will serve the king of Babylon for seventy years.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The LORD speaks through Jeremiah to pronounce judgment on Judah and the surrounding nations. This declaration occurs during a prophetic assembly warning of impending national collapse.
The words — The phrase לְ/חָרְבָּ֖ה (le./cha.re.Bah) and לְ/שַׁמָּ֑ה (le./sha.Mah) literally render as “into a desolation” and “into a waste.” The verb וְ/עָ֨בְד֜וּ (ve./'A.ve.Du) means “and they will serve,” specifying the nations’ subjugation.
The thread — The seventy-year period reappears in Daniel 9:2 as the timeframe Daniel studies, Zechariah 1:12 as the limit of God’s withheld mercy, and 2 Chronicles 36:21 as the fulfillment of the land’s Sabbath rest.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition that political empires operate under a fixed divine timeline and that national rebellion inevitably produces enforced subjugation.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And this whole land shall be a desolation, and an astonishment; and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years.
Cross-references
- Daniel 9:2 in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the sacred books, according to the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years.
- Zechariah 1:12 Then the angel of the LORD said, “How long, O LORD of Hosts, will You withhold mercy from Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, with which You have been angry these seventy years?”
- 2 Chronicles 36:21 So the land enjoyed its Sabbath rest all the days of the desolation, until seventy years were completed, in fulfillment of the word of the LORD spoken through Jeremiah.
- Jeremiah 25:12 But when seventy years are complete, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their guilt, declares the LORD, and I will make it an everlasting desolation.
- Zechariah 7:5 “Ask all the people of the land and the priests, ‘When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months for these seventy years, was it really for Me that you fasted?
- Isaiah 23:15 At that time Tyre will be forgotten for seventy years—the span of a king’s life. But at the end of seventy years, it will happen to Tyre as in the song of the harlot:
- Jeremiah 4:27 For this is what the LORD says: “The whole land will be desolate, but I will not finish its destruction.
- Jeremiah 12:11 They have made it a desolation; desolate before Me, it mourns. All the land is laid waste, but no man takes it to heart.