Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 16

The word of the Lord came also to me.— The formula introduces a new and distinct message, extending to Jeremiah 17:18, and it is one even more terrible in its threats than any that have preceded it. There is nothing in its contents to fix the date with any certainty, but we may think of it as probably about the close of the reign of Jehoiakim, when that king was trusting in an alliance with Egypt (Jeremiah 17:13), and the people taunted the prophet with the non-fulfilment of his predictions (Jeremiah 17:15).

Thou shalt not take thee a wife ... —The words came to an Israelite and to a priest with a force which we can hardly understand.

With them marriage, and the hopes which it involved, was not only a happiness but a duty, and to be cut off from it was to renounce both, because the evil that was coming on the nation was such as to turn both into a curse. We may compare our Lord’s words in Matthew 24:19 and those spoken to the daughters of Jerusalem (Luke 23:29), and what, in part at least, entered into St. Paul’s motives for a similar abstinence on account of the present distress (1 Corinthians 7:26).

Of grievous deaths. —Literally, deaths from diseases, including, perhaps, famine , as contrasted with the more immediate work of the sword.

They shall not be lamented. —Among a people who attached such importance to the due observance of funeral rites as the Jews did, the neglect of those rites was, of course, here, as in Jeremiah 22:18, a symptom of extreme misery. Like features have presented themselves in the pestilences or sieges of other cities and other times, as in the description in Lucretius (vi. 1278):—

“Nec mos ille sepulturæ remanebat in urbe,
Quo pius hic populus semper consuerat humari.”
“No more the customary rites of burial
Were practised in the city, such as was customary
Of old to tend the dead with reverent care.”

Compare the account of the plague at Athens in Thucydides (ii. 52).

The house of mourning. —Better, mourning-feast. The word is found only here and in Amos 6:7, where it is translated “banquet.” So the Vulgate gives here domus convivii, and the Septuagint the Greek word for a “drinking party.” The word literally means a “shout,” and is so far applicable to either joy or sorrow.

The context seems decisive in favor of the latter meaning, but the idea of the “feast” or “social gathering” should be, at least, recognized. Not to go into the house of mirth would be a light matter as compared with abstaining even from visits of sympathy and condolence. In Ecclesiastes 7:4 the Hebrew gives a different word.

My peace. —The word is used in its highest power, as including all other blessings. It is Jehovah’s peace: that which He once had given, but which He now withholds . Men were to accept that withdrawal in silent awe, not with the conventional routine of customary sorrow.

Nor cut themselves, nor make themselves bald. — Both practices were forbidden by the Law (Leviticus 19:28; Leviticus 21:5; Deuteronomy 14:1), probably in order to draw a line of demarcation between Israel and the surrounding nations, among whom such practices prevailed (1 Kings 18:28). Both, however, seem to have been common, and probably had gained in frequency under Ahaz and Manasseh (Jeremiah 7:29; Jeremiah 41:5; Ezekiel 7:18; Amos 8:10; Micah 1:16). The “baldness” (i.e., shaving the crown of the head) seems to have been the more common of the two.