Jeremiah 7:29

Cut off thine hair; it was a usual token of sorrow among the Jews to cut off the hair, Job 1:20; Isaiah 15:2; Micah 1:16. But here he speaketh either,

1. To Jeremiah; for

O Jerusalem is not in the text; or,

2. To the inhabitants of Jerusalem; and so speaks to them as a woman, whose hair is for an ornament, 1 Corinthians 11:15. Therefore this must needs signify a higher degree of sorrow. Cutting the hair among the ancients did signify,

1. Mourning.

2. Bondage. For the cutting off the hair in servants was a token of subjection; so that this speaks Jerusalem’s mournful condition in her captivity.

Cast it away; it is not to be reserved, as sometimes men and women both do for some use; but to be cast away, and as a thing good for nought. And thus it may agree with the church’s lamentation, Lamentations 5:16; for it is not here exhorted to as a token of repentance, but as a threatening of judgments.

Take up a lamentation on high places: see Jeremiah 3:21. Lift up thy voice on high in lamentation, when thou hast thine eye or thoughts upon the high places where thou wentest a whoring from me, for which thou now goest into captivity.

The generation of his wrath; or, of his overrunning anger, as some render it, i.e. with whom he is extremely vexed, this present generation, that by their provocations have brought themselves under his wrath, Jeremiah 7:18,Jeremiah 7:20, a generation destined to the wrath of God, called elsewhere the people of his curse, Isaiah 34:5, and such as the apostle calls vessels of wrath, Romans 9:22, so far as it concerns the phrase.