Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 13:16

"Give glory to Jehovah your God, before he cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and, while ye look for light, he turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness." — Jeremiah 13:16 (ASV)

Give glory to the Lord your God. — Probably in the same sense as in Joshua 7:19 and John 9:24, perhaps also in Malachi 2:2, “give glory by confessing the truth, even though that truth is a sin that involves punishment.” “Confess your guilt before it is too late for pardon.” This fits in better with the context than the more general sense of “ascribing praise to God.”

Before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains. — Literally, the mountains of twilight, the word used is employed exclusively, first in the sense of the coolness and then of the gathering gloom of evening twilight, and never of the dawn. (Compare its use in Job 3:9; Job 24:15; Proverbs 7:9.) The fact that the shadows are deepening is obviously one of the vivid touches of the figurative language used. The twilight is to pass on into the midnight darkness of the “shadow of death.” The same thought is found in Isaiah 59:10, and (probably with some reference to this very passage) in our Lord’s words, If a man walk in the night he stumbleth (John 11:10; John 12:35).