Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 14

Concerning the drought. —Literally, on the report or news of the drought. This is clearly the opening of a new discourse, which continues to Jeremiah 17:18; but as no special calamity of this kind is mentioned in the historical account of Jeremiah’s life, its date cannot be fixed with certainty. As Jeremiah 15:15 implies that he had already suffered scorn or persecution for his prophetic work, we may reasonably assume some period not earlier than the reign of Jehoiakim.

The gates thereof languish. —The “gates” of the cities, as the chief places of assembly (much like the agora of Greek cities), figuratively represent the inhabitants, who, in “black” garments of sorrow and with the pallor of the famine (a state in which all faces gather blackness), are crouching on the ground in their despair.

Their little ones. —Not their children, but their menial servants. The word is peculiar to Jeremiah, and occurs only here and in Jeremiah 48:4. The vivid picture of the messengers running back and forth to all wells, and springs, and tanks, reminds us of Ahab’s search for wells or springs in the time of the great drought of his reign (1 Kings 18:5), of the two or three cities wandering to the one city that was yet supplied with water (Amos 4:8).

The pits. —The tanks or reservoirs where, if anywhere, water might be looked for.

Covered their heads. —The extremest sign of a grief too great to utter itself to others, craving to be alone in its wretchedness (2 Samuel 15:30; 2 Samuel 19:4). The student will recollect it as occurring also in the account of the painting of Agamemnon at the Sacrifice of Iphigenia, ascribed to Timanthes.

The ground is chapt. —The word is so vivid in describing the long fissures of the soil in a time of drought that one reluctantly admits that no such meaning is found in the Hebrew word, which simply means is struck with terror. The translators apparently followed Luther, who gives lechzet—“languishes for thirst,” “gapes open with exhaustion,” and so applied to the earth, “is cracked or chapt.”

As the “gates” in Jeremiah 14:2 stood for the people of the city, so the “ground” stands here as in visible sympathy with the tillers of the soil, the “plowmen” of the next clause.

They covered their heads. —There is a singular, almost awful, pathos in the iteration of this description. Cities and country alike are plunged into the utter blackness of despair.

Yea. —Better, For, as the Hebrew is usually translated. What follows gives the reason for the terror which has come upon the people. Each region has its representative instance of misery. The hind of the field (the female of the common stag—the Cervus elaphus of zoologists), noted for its tenderness to its young, abandons it, and turns away to seek pasture for itself, and fails to find any.