Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 14:17

"And thou shalt say this word unto them, Let mine eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease; for the virgin daughter of my people is broken with a great breach, with a very grievous wound." — Jeremiah 14:17 (ASV)

You shall say this word. —Though not in form a prediction, no words could express more emphatically the terrible nature of the judgments implied in the preceding verse. The language (in part a reproduction of Jeremiah 13:17) is all but identical with that which recurs again and again in the Lamentations (Jeremiah 1:16; Jeremiah 2:11; Jeremiah 2:18), and may be looked upon as the germ from which those elegies of woe developed.