Jeremiah 49:12

For this is what the LORD says: “If those who do not deserve to drink the cup must drink it, can you possibly remain unpunished? You will not go unpunished, for you must drink it too.

Berean Standard Bible

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Study note

Setting — Yahweh addresses a nation facing imminent judgment, positioned between a command to care for vulnerable orphans and widows (Jeremiah 49:11) and a sworn oath of total desolation (Jeremiah 49:13).

The words — אֵין ('ein) = not and מִשְׁפָּטָם (mishpaṭam) = their judgment form the phrase describing those who lack legal grounds to drink the cup.

The thread — The inescapable cup motif appears in Jeremiah 25:28, where refusal to drink is impossible, and in Obadiah 1:16, which links drinking on a holy mountain to universal national consumption.

Why it lands — The text demands acknowledgment that perceived innocence does not exempt one from divine reckoning, requiring a clear-eyed acceptance of inevitable consequences rather than appeals to fairness.

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

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.

Cross-references

Jeremiah 25:28 If they refuse to take the cup from your hand and drink it, you are to tell them that this is what the LORD of Hosts says: ‘You most certainly must drink it!
Obadiah 1:16 For as you drank on My holy mountain, so all the nations will drink continually. They will drink and gulp it down; they will be as if they had never existed.
Proverbs 17:5 He who mocks the poor insults their Maker; whoever gloats over calamity will not go unpunished.
Jeremiah 25:15 This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, said to me: “Take from My hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink from it.
Jeremiah 30:11 For I am with you to save you, declares the LORD. Though I will completely destroy all the nations to which I have scattered you, I will not completely destroy you. Yet I will discipline you justly, and will by no means leave you unpunished.”
Jeremiah 46:27 But you, O Jacob My servant, do not be afraid, and do not be dismayed, O Israel. For I will surely save you out of a distant place, your descendants from the land of their captivity! Jacob will return to quiet and ease, with no one to make him afraid.
Lamentations 4:21 So rejoice and be glad, O Daughter of Edom, you who dwell in the land of Uz. Yet the cup will pass to you as well; you will get drunk and expose yourself.
1 Peter 4:17 For it is time for judgment to begin with the family of God; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who disobey the gospel of God?