Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 9:21

"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." — Jeremiah 9:21 (ASV)

Death is come up into our windows. —“Death” stands here, as in Jeremiah 15:2, specifically for the pestilence. This pestilence is to add its horrors to those of the famine and the sword; it also creeps in with its fatal taint at the windows, even though the invader is for a time kept at bay. It cuts off the children who would otherwise play “without”—that is, in the courtyard of the house—and the “young men” who would otherwise gather, as was their custom, in the streets or the open places of the city. The Hebrew word rehoboth corresponds to “piazza,” “square,” “market-place,” rather than to our street.