4 Let everyone keep watch on his neighbour, and put no faith in any brother: for every brother will certainly be tricking his brother, and every neighbour will go about saying evil.
Put no faith in a friend, do not let your hope be placed in a relation: keep watch on the doors of your mouth against her who is resting on your breast. For the son puts shame on his father, the daughter goes against her mother and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's haters are those of his family.
All of them are turned away, going about with false stories; they are brass and iron: they are all workers of deceit.
Everyone says false words to his neighbour: their tongues are smooth in their talk, and their hearts are full of deceit. The smooth lips and the tongue of pride will be cut off by the Lord.
Do not go about saying untrue things among your people, or take away the life of your neighbour by false witness: I am the Lord.
And he said, Your brother came with deceit, and took away your blessing. And he said, Is it because he is named Jacob that he has twice taken my place? for he took away my birthright, and now he has taken away my blessing. And he said, Have you not kept a blessing for me?
For even your brothers, your father's family, even they have been untrue to you, crying loudly after you: have no faith in them, though they say fair words to you.
One who gives false witness against his neighbour is a hammer and a sword and a sharp arrow.
Whose tongue is not false, who does no evil to his friend, and does not take away the good name of his neighbour;
And he said, Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel: for in your fight with God and with men you have overcome.
Evil is there; cruel rule and deceit are ever in the streets. For it was not my hater who said evil of me; that would have been no grief to me; it was not one outside the number of my friends who made himself strong against me, or I would have kept myself from him in a secret place;
So putting away all wrongdoing, and all tricks and deceits and envies and evil talk, Be full of desire for the true milk of the word, as babies at their mothers' breasts, so that you may go on to salvation;
And that no man may make attempts to get the better of his brother in business: for the Lord is the judge in all these things, as we said to you before and gave witness.
Do not have the thought that I have come to send peace on the earth; I came not to send peace but a sword. For I have come to put a man against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law:
And brother will give up brother to death, and the father his child: and children will go against their fathers and mothers, and put them to death.
In you there are men who say evil of others, causing death; in you they have taken the flesh with the blood for food; in your streets they have put evil designs into effect.
A false witness, breathing out untrue words, and one who lets loose violent acts among brothers.
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.