6 Your habitation is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know me, says Yahweh.
They tell God, 'Depart from us, For we don't want to know about your ways. What is the Almighty, that we should serve him? What profit should we have, if we pray to him?'
Because I have called, and you have refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no one has paid attention;
This evil people, who refuse to hear my words, who walk in the stubbornness of their heart, and are gone after other gods to serve them, and to worship them, shall even be as this belt, which is profitable for nothing.
This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and doesn't come to the light, lest his works would be exposed.
Deliver my soul, Yahweh, from lying lips, From a deceitful tongue. What will be given to you, and what will be done more to you, You deceitful tongue? Sharp arrows of the mighty, With coals of juniper. Woe is me, that I live in Meshech, That I dwell among the tents of Kedar! My soul has had her dwelling too long With him who hates peace.
As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit: therefore they are become great, and grew rich.
Why then is this people of Jerusalem slidden back by a perpetual backsliding? they hold fast deceit, they refuse to return.
But I was like a gentle lamb that is led to the slaughter; and I didn't know that they had devised devices against me, [saying], Let us destroy the tree with the fruit of it, and let us cut him off from the land of the living, that his name may be no more remembered.
Then said they, Come, and let us devise devices against Jeremiah; for the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come, and let us strike him with the tongue, and let us not give heed to any of his words.
For I have heard the defaming of many, terror on every side. Denounce, and we will denounce him, [say] all my familiar friends, those who watch for my fall; peradventure he will be persuaded, and we shall prevail against him, and we shall take our revenge on him.
Even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting;
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.