Charles Spurgeon Commentary Jeremiah 9
Charles Spurgeon Commentary
Jeremiah 9
Charles Spurgeon Commentary
Jeremiah 9
Commentary Groups
This author has written multiple commentaries over their lifetime on this chapter. We have grouped their commentaries for easier reading."Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!" — Jeremiah 9:1 (ASV)
Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!
Jeremiah foresaw that the Chaldeans would come up, and so many would be slain that the nation would be almost destroyed.
"Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging-place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they are all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men." — Jeremiah 9:2 (ASV)
He mourned because of the doom that awaited them; but he equally mourned because of the sin that would bring that doom upon them. He wished that he could get away into one of those refuges, which were provided in lonely places, where travelers might lodge for a night.
"And they bend their tongue, [as it were] their bow, for falsehood; and they are grown strong in the land, but not for truth: for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith Jehovah." — Jeremiah 9:3 (ASV)
And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies:
They made use of the tongue, as if it were a bow, to shoot out falsehood. It is a very graphic description of the men of Jeremiah's day. He dips his pen in his heart's blood as he writes about them.
But they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth;
Oh, no! No one stood up for the truth in those days; no man was willing to suffer for it, to argue for it, or even to own it.
For they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, says the LORD.
They grew worse and worse. It is the way of wicked men to ripen into greater sin. They proceeded from evil to evil; and Jeremiah had Jehovah's testimony for it that, though they knew a great many things, they did not know the LORD: They know not me, says the LORD.
"Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!" — Jeremiah 9:1 (ASV)
Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!
This is how God's servants feel about the dying and perishing souls all around them. They cannot bear the thought of the sinner's awful doom; it brings continuous heartbreak and heaviness of spirit upon them. That people should eternally perish, that they should bring on their own heads the doom of their own sin, is no small thing, and therefore the Lord's servant mourns over those who mourn not for themselves. God save every one of us, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake! Amen.
"Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!" — Jeremiah 9:1 (ASV)
Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, then, I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!
Matthew Henry well observes that, in the Hebrew, the same word signifies "eye" and "fountain," as if God had given us eyes to weep with as much as to see with, as if there were as much cause to sorrow over sin as to look out upon the beauties of the world.
Magnificent in its poetry, and most touching in its pathos, is this verse, which ought never to have been cut off from the previous chapter: Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!
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