21 For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt: I mourn; dismay has taken hold on me.
You shall say this word to them, Let my eyes run down with tears night and day, and let them not cease; for the virgin daughter of my people is broken with a great breach, with a very grievous wound.
At their presence the peoples are in anguish. All faces have grown pale.
My anguish, my anguish! I am pained at my very heart; my heart is disquieted in me; I can't hold my peace; because you have heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war.
Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a spring of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!
I tell the truth in Christ. I am not lying, my conscience testifying with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brothers' sake, my relatives according to the flesh,
I said to the king, Let the king live forever: why should not my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' tombs, lies waste, and the gates of it are consumed with fire?
For there, those who led us captive asked us for songs. Those who tormented us demanded songs of joy: "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!" How can we sing Yahweh's song in a foreign land? If I forget you, Jerusalem, Let my right hand forget its skill. Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth if I don't remember you; If I don't prefer Jerusalem above my chief joy.
I am dark, but lovely, You daughters of Jerusalem, Like Kedar's tents, Like Solomon's curtains. Don't stare at me because I am dark, Because the sun has scorched me. My mother's sons were angry with me. They made me keeper of the vineyards. I haven't kept my own vineyard.
As for me, I have not hurried from being a shepherd after you; neither have I desired the woeful day; you know: that which came out of my lips was before your face.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Jeremiah 8
Commentary on Jeremiah 8 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 8
The prophet proceeds, in this chapter, both to magnify and to justify the destruction that God was bringing upon this people, to show how grievous it would be and yet how righteous.
Jer 8:1-3
These verses might fitly have been joined to the close of the foregoing chapter, as giving a further description of the dreadful desolation which the army of the Chaldeans should make in the land. It shall strangely alter the property of death itself, and for the worse too.
Jer 8:4-12
The prophet here is instructed to set before this people the folly of their impenitence, which was it that brought this ruin upon them. They are here represented as the most stupid senseless people in the world, that would not be made wise by all the methods that Infinite Wisdom took to bring them to themselves and their right mind, and so to prevent the ruin that was coming upon them.
Jer 8:13-22
In these verses we have,