Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 25:17

"Then took I the cup at Jehovah`s hand, and made all the nations to drink, unto whom Jehovah had sent me:" — Jeremiah 25:17 (ASV)

Then took I the cup ... —The words describe the act of the prophet as in the ecstasy of vision. One by one the nations are made to drink of that cup of the wrath of Jehovah, of which His own country was to have the first and fullest draft. It is a strange example of the literalism of minds incapable of entering into the poetry of a prophet’s work, that one commentator (Michaelis) has supposed that the prophet offered an actual goblet of wine to the ambassadors of the states named, who were then, as he imagines, assembled at Jerusalem, as in Jeremiah 27:3.