5 They will deceive everyone his neighbor, and will not speak the truth: they have taught their tongue to speak lies; they weary themselves to commit iniquity.
Her rich men are full of violence, Her inhabitants speak lies, And their tongue is deceitful in their speech.
For your iniquity teaches your mouth, And you choose the language of the crafty.
through the hypocrisy of men who speak lies, branded in their own conscience as with a hot iron;
Therefore, putting away falsehood, speak truth each one with his neighbor. For we are members one of another.
My people, what have I done to you? How have I burdened you? Answer me!
She has wearied [herself] with toil; yet her great rust doesn't go forth out of her; her rust doesn't [go forth] by fire.
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 don't know me, says Yahweh.
transgressing and denying Yahweh, and turning away from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood. Justice is turned away backward, and righteousness stands afar off; for truth is fallen in the street, and uprightness can't enter. Yes, truth is lacking; and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. Yahweh saw it, and it displeased him who there was no justice.
The smith [makes] an axe, and works in the coals, and fashions it with hammers, and works it with his strong arm: yes, he is hungry, and his strength fails; he drinks no water, and is faint. The carpenter stretches out a line; he marks it out with a pencil; he shapes it with planes, and he marks it out with the compasses, and shapes it after the figure of a man, according to the beauty of a man, to dwell in a house. He cuts down cedars for himself, and takes the cypress and the oak, and strengthens for himself one among the trees of the forest: he plants a fir tree, and the rain nourishes it.
They help everyone his neighbor; and [every one] says to his brother, Be of good courage. So the carpenter encourages the goldsmith, [and] he who smoothes with the hammer him who strikes the anvil, saying of the soldering, It is good; and he fastens it with nails, that is should not be moved.
For they don't sleep, unless they do evil. Their sleep is taken away, unless they make someone fall.
They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent. Viper's poison is under their lips. Selah.
"You give your mouth to evil. You harnesses your tongue for deceit.
Behold, he travails with iniquity; Yes, he has conceived mischief, And brought forth falsehood.
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.