19 For a sound of weeping goes up from Zion, a cry, How has destruction come on us? we are overcome with shame because we have gone away from our land; he has sent us out from our house.
See, he will come up like the clouds, and his war-carriages like the storm-wind: his horses are quicker than eagles. Sorrow is ours, for destruction has come on us.
You will go feeling your way when the sun is high, like a blind man for whom all is dark, and nothing will go well for you: you will be crushed and made poor for ever, and you will have no saviour.
And those of them who get away safely will go and be in the secret places like the doves of the valleys, all of them will come to death, every one in his sin. All hands will be feeble and all knees without strength, like water. And they will put haircloth round them, and deep fear will be covering them; and shame will be on all faces, and the hair gone from all their heads.
And the land itself has become unclean; so that I have sent on it the reward of its wrongdoing, and the land itself puts out those who are living in it.
So that the land may not put you out from it, when you make it unclean, as it put out the nations which were there before you.
Is Israel a servant? has he been a house-servant from birth? why has he been made waste?
News is given of destruction on destruction; all the land is made waste: suddenly my tents, straight away my curtains, are made waste.
And you, when you are made waste, what will you do? Though you are clothed in red, though you make yourself beautiful with ornaments of gold, though you make your eyes wide with paint, it is for nothing that you make yourself fair; your lovers have no more desire for you, they have designs on your life. A voice has come to my ears like the voice of a woman in birth-pains, the pain of one giving birth to her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, fighting for breath, stretching out her hands, saying, Now sorrow is mine! for my strength is gone from me before the takers of life.
Away! unclean! they were crying out to them, Away! away! let there be no touching: when they went away in flight and wandering, men said among the nations, There is no further resting-place for them.
Our heritage is given up to men of strange lands, our houses to those who are not our countrymen.
For this I will be full of sorrow and give cries of grief; I will go uncovered and unclothed: I will give cries of grief like the jackals and will be in sorrow like the ostriches. For her wounds may not be made well: for it has come even to Judah, stretching up to the doorway of my people, even to Jerusalem.
In that day this saying will be said about you, and this song of grief will be made: The heritage of my people is measured out, and there is no one to give it back; those who have made us prisoners have taken our fields from us, and complete destruction has come to us.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Jeremiah 9
Commentary on Jeremiah 9 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 9
In this chapter the prophet goes on faithfully to reprove sin and to threaten God's judgments for it, and yet bitterly to lament both, as one that neither rejoiced at iniquity nor was glad at calamities.
Jer 9:1-11
The prophet, being commissioned both to foretel the destruction coming upon Judah and Jerusalem and to point out the sin for which that destruction was brought upon them, here, as elsewhere, speaks of both very feelingly: what he said of both came from the heart, and therefore one would have thought it would reach to the heart.
Jer 9:12-22
Two things the prophet designs, in these verses, with reference to the approaching destruction of Judah and Jerusalem:-
Jer 9:23-26
The prophet had been endeavouring to possess this people with a holy fear of God and his judgments, to convince them both of sin and wrath; but still they had recourse to some sorry subterfuge or other, under which to shelter themselves from the conviction and with which to excuse themselves in the obstinacy and carelessness. He therefore sets himself here to drive them from these refuges of lies and to show them the insufficiency of them.