Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 25:26

"and all the kings of the north, far and near, one with another; and all the kingdoms of the world, which are upon the face of the earth: and the king of Sheshach shall drink after them." — Jeremiah 25:26 (ASV)

The kings of the north. — The term is used generally (the Jews knowing comparatively little of the detailed geography of that region, the Gog, Magog, Meshech, and Tubal of Ezekiel 38-39), as in Jeremiah 1:14, for the Scythians and other nations lying between the Caspian Sea and the Tigris. In the corresponding passage of Jeremiah 51:27, Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz are specially named.

The kingdoms of the world. — The words are, of course, limited by the horizon of the prophet’s vision. As the “world” of the New Testament writers was the Roman Empire, so in the life of Jeremiah it was identical with that of Babylon. (Daniel 4:22.)

The king of Sheshach. — The name, which obviously is, from its position, the culminating point of the whole prophecy, is found only here and in Jeremiah 51:41. No city or country bearing this name is mentioned in the Old Testament or in any ancient writer. The traditional Rabbinic explanation is beyond doubt the true one. We have here the earliest known example of the use of a cipher-writing to disguise the meaning of what was written from all but the initiated. The cipher in this instance, known by the significant name of ATBASH (i.e., A taking the place of T, and T of A, B of SH, and SH of B, and so on), consisted in the use of the Hebrew alphabet in an inverted order, thus giving SHeSHaCH as an equivalent for BaBeL. This, then, was the crowning mystery reserved to the last.

The Chaldean kingdom was to do its work as the scourge of God upon the nations; but it was simply an instrument in His hand, as the Assyrians had been in their day (Isaiah 10:15). When the work was done, the law of a righteous retribution would be felt by it and by its rulers. It adds to the point of the enigma that the word Sheshach would suggest to a Hebrew, considering its probable etymology, the idea of “crouching” or “sinking.”

It may be noted:

1. that the use of such a cipher seems to belong to the same mental characteristics as the prominence of the Hebrew alphabet in the acrostic structure of the Lamentations;
2. that the name is omitted by the Septuagint both here and in Jeremiah 51:41; and
3. that another instance of the same cipher is found in Jeremiah 51:1.

The second fact is presumptive evidence that the word was not found in the copy that the Greek translators had before them. From this, the natural inference is that two editions of the prophecy existed even in the prophet’s time: one with the enigmatic word and one without it. The latter was probably the earlier of the two. The former edition, for the comfort of Israel, added both the limits of their exile (Jeremiah 25:14) and this intimation (so veiled that the Chaldeans, if they came across it, would not be likely to understand its meaning) of how it would at last be brought to its close.

The use of the cipher has, however, been questioned by some writers, who refer the name to shishaki, a possible form of the name of the moon-god of the Chaldeans (Rawlinson: Herod, i., p. 616). If the existence of any obscure region bearing the name could be proved, it would still be perfectly compatible with the use of the cipher, as veiling its true significance. Other meanings for the word, such as “the warlike city,” “the king’s palace,” have been suggested by recent scholars.