Jeremiah 9:10-22

The Desolation of the Land

v. 10. For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing, the prophet once more taking up his lament, and for the habitations of the wilderness, for the pastures of the steppes, a lamentation because they are burned up, singed by the sun's excessive heat, no one remaining to tend and to irrigate them, so that none can pass through them, much less inhabit them; neither can men hear the voice of the cattle, their contented lowing in luscious pastures; both the fowl of the heavens and the beast are fled; they are gone, the land being deserted by every form of life. Upon this complaint Jehovah answers.

v. 11. (And) I will make Jerusalem heaps, a shapeless ruin, and a den of dragons, or jackals; and I will make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant, the standing expression for the very height of desolation. The application of the prophet now follows.

v. 12. Who is the wise man that may understand this? Who will heed and apply this lesson, this warning, in a proper manner? And who is he to whom the mouth of the Lord hath spoken that he may declare it, explain it to his countrymen, for what the land perisheth and is burned up like a wilderness that none passeth through? Evidently there is not one who possesses this divine wisdom.

v. 13. And the Lord said, in answering the question which has just been proposed. Because they have forsaken My Law which I set before them and have not obeyed My voice, the message brought by the true prophets, neither walked therein, not making the Word of the Lord their one rule of life,

v. 14. but have walked after the imagination of their own heart, following their own sinful desires in all the acts of their lives, and after Baalim, the idols of the heathen, which their fathers taught them, whose idolatry they made their own, thus becoming guilty of the same transgressions:

v. 15. therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, the almighty and only God, Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, a bitter and poisonous food, and give them water of gall to drink, poison-water, Cf. Jeremiah 8:14.

v. 16. I will scatter them also among the heathen, in shameful captivity and exile, whom neither they nor their fathers have known, as an adequate punishment for their transgression; and I will send a sword after them till I have consumed them, a large number of them thus being destroyed, especially among those who sought the shelter of Egypt, against the warning of God. Cf. Jeremiah 44:27.

v. 17. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Consider ye and call for the mourning women, those hired to give expression to their grief by plaintive cries and a general mournful behavior, found also in the New Testament, Matthew 9:23, that they may come, and send for cunning women that they may come, for those most skilful in lamentation were required in this instance;

v. 18. and let them make haste and take up a wailing for us, for the whole nation of Judah, that our eyes may run down with tears and our eyelids gush out with waters, in the strongest expression of excessive sorrow.

v. 19. For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion, in a lamentation over the city's pitiful fate, but without a true repentance of the heart. How are we spoiled, laid waste by the enemy! We are greatly confounded, heaped with shame and disgrace, because we have forsaken the land, having been compelled to leave it, because our dwellings have cast us out, or, "because the enemy has driven us out. "

v. 20. Yet hear the word of the Lord, O ye women, and let your ear receive the word of His mouth, in ready obedience to the suggestion which He here makes, and teach your daughters wailing and every one her neighbor lamentation, so that the older generation of mourning women might quickly be replaced, and that there might always be a sufficient number of professional mourners in view of the coming slaughter.

v. 21. For death is come up into our windows, unexpectedly, stealthily, like a thief in the night, and is entered into our palaces, for the soldiers of the invading army, finding the doors barred, would gain admission through openings which are not so firmly barred, to cut off the children from without, those playing out in the streets and in the open places, and the young men from the streets. Thus death would take its harvest both in the houses and outside, in the streets and market-places.

v. 22. Speak, this being addressed to the prophet, in continuing the command of verse 20, Thus saith the Lord, Even the carcasses of men shall fall as dung upon the open field, there to rot away, and as the handful after the harvest-man, the grain ready to be gathered into sheaves, and none shall gather them, there would be neither a gathering of the bundles nor the labor of gleaners to take care of this grain. The words imply utter destruction, an utter casting aside on the part of Jehovah.