Albert Barnes Commentary Jeremiah 9:10-22
Albert Barnes Commentary
Jeremiah 9:10-22
Albert Barnes Commentary
Jeremiah 9:10-22
SCRIPTURE
"For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing, and for the pastures of the wilderness a lamentation, because they are burned up, so that none passeth through; neither can men hear the voice of the cattle; both the birds of the heavens and the beasts are fled, they are gone. And I will make Jerusalem heaps, a dwelling-place of jackals; and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant. Who is the wise man, that may understand this? and [who is] he to whom the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken, that he may declare it? wherefore is the land perished and burned up like a wilderness, so that none passeth through? And Jehovah saith, Because they have forsaken my law which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, neither walked therein, but have walked after the stubbornness of their own heart, and after the Baalim, which their fathers taught them; therefore thus saith Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel, Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink. I will scatter them also among the nations, whom neither they nor their fathers have known; and I will send the sword after them, till I have consumed them. Thus saith Jehovah of hosts, Consider ye, and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for the skilful women, that they may come: and let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters. For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion, How are we ruined! we are greatly confounded, because we have forsaken the land, because they have cast down our dwellings. Yet hear the word of Jehovah, O ye women, and let your ear receive the word of his mouth; and teach your daughters wailing, and every one her neighbor lamentation. For death is come up into our windows, it is entered into our palaces; to cut off the children from without, [and] the young men from the streets. Speak, Thus saith Jehovah, The dead bodies of men shall fall as dung upon the open field, and as the handful after the harvestman; and none shall gather [them]." — Jeremiah 9:10-22 (ASV)
The punishment described in general terms in the preceding three verses is now detailed at great length.
The habitations, that is, the temporary encampments of the shepherds .
So that none can... Or, They are parched up, with no man to pass through them; neither do they hear the voice of cattle; from the birds of the heaven even to the beasts they are fled, they are gone.
Dragons. Rather, jackals.
For what the land perisheth... This is the question proposed for consideration. The prophet calls upon the wise man to explain his question, that question being, Why did the land perish? He follows it by the assertion of a fact: It is parched like the wilderness with no man to pass through.
The cause of the chastisement about to fall upon Jerusalem was their desertion of the divine Law.
Imagination. Or, as in the margin.
Which their fathers taught them. It was not the sin of one generation that brought chastisement upon them; it was a sin which had been handed down from father to son.
I will feed them... Rather, I am feeding them. The present participle used here, followed by three verbs in the future, shows that the judgment has begun, of which the successive stages are given in the next clause.
Wormwood (see Deuteronomy 29:18 note), and for water of gall (Jeremiah 8:14 note).
This verse is taken from Leviticus 26:33. The fulfillment of what had been so long before appointed as the penalty for the violation of Yahweh’s covenant is one of the most remarkable proofs that prophecy was something more than human foresight.
Till I have consumed them (see Jeremiah 4:27 note). How is this consuming consistent with the promise to the contrary there given? Because it is limited by the terms of Jeremiah 9:7. Previously to Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Jerusalem, God removed into safety those in whom the nation should revive.
The mourning women. These were women hired to attend funerals and, by their skilled wailings, help the real mourners give vent to their grief. Hence, they are called cunning (literally, “wise”) women, as wisdom is constantly used in Scripture for anything in which people are trained.
Take up a wailing for us. That is, for the nation once God’s chosen people, but long spiritually dead.
Forsaken. Or, left: forced to abandon the land.
Because our dwellings... Rather, because they have cast down our dwellings. The whole verse is a description of their sufferings (see 2 Kings 25:1–12).
The command is addressed to the women because it was more especially their part to express the general feelings of the nation (see 1 Samuel 18:6; 2 Samuel 1:24). The women now utter the death-wail over the perishing nation. They are to teach their daughters and neighbors lamentation (that is, “dirge”), because the harvest of death would be so large that the number of trained women would not suffice.
Death is come up... That is, death steals silently like a thief upon its victims and makes such havoc that there are no children left to go without, nor young men to frequent the open spaces in the city.
The handful means the little bundle of grain which the reaper gathers on his arm with three or four strokes of his sickle and then lays down. Behind the reaper came one whose business it was to gather several of these bundles and bind them into a sheaf. Thus, death strews the ground with corpses as thickly as these handfuls lie upon the reaped land, but the corpses lie there unheeded.