John Calvin Commentary Jeremiah 7:29

"Cut off thy hair, [O Jerusalem], and cast it away, and take up a lamentation on the bare heights; for Jehovah hath rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath." — Jeremiah 7:29 (ASV)

Here again, Jeremiah exhorts his own people to lament; and he uses the feminine gender, as though he called the people the daughter of Sion, or the daughter of Jerusalem. Then, according to a common way of speaking, he calls the whole people a woman.

He first bids her to shave off the hair. The word נזר, nesar, means the hair, derived from the Nazarites, who allowed their hair to grow. There may be a striking allusion here to the Nazarites who were sacred to God, as though he had said, “This people are profane, and therefore ought to have nothing in common with the Nazarites.” From this is also derived נזר, nesar, a crown. Though the word means the hair, yet the allusion is not to be overlooked—that this people, rejected by God, are commanded to cut off and throw away the hair.

After throwing away the hair, there was to be great lamentation. Raise, he says, on high places a lamentation. This may seem to be an exhortation to repentance. But, as we have seen elsewhere, though the prophets often gave the people the hope of pardon and reconciliation, yet in this place the Prophet no doubt denounces a final judgment and is a herald of lamentation, because the prevailing impiety was irreclaimable. He does not, then, perform here the duty of a teacher but, in a hostile manner, denounces ruin:

For Jehovah has rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath. The word דור, dur, means an age—not time, but men of the same age—as we call the men now living in the world our generation, those who are dead the generation of our fathers, and those who succeed us the next generation.

It is indeed true that the Israelites in every age were worthy of similar vengeance. But God no doubt shows here that His vengeance was near, for He had long borne with the perverse conduct of the people and suspended His judgment. Since vengeance was now to be executed, the Prophet calls that age 'the age of God’s wrath.' For we know that the genitive case in Hebrew often has such a meaning.

Thus, 'the age of His wrath' means the age or generation devoted to extreme vengeance, because their wickedness against God was extreme while He treated them with forbearance. Therefore, the longer He had deferred His judgment, the heavier the punishment that was near.