Jeremiah 16:4 - Exposition

Grievous deaths ; literally, deaths of sicknesses ; i.e. all kinds of painful deaths, including (as Jeremiah 14:18 shows) death by starvation. They shall not be lamented . The absence of sepulture has already been pointed to several times as a feature of the horror of the times ( Jeremiah 8:2 ; Jeremiah 14:16 ; comp. Jeremiah 7:33 ), but this is a new and affecting touch. Dr. Payne Smith aptly refers to the plagues of Athens and London, in which the gentler elements of human nature were for the time almost extinguished.