21 For a breach of the daughter of my people have I been broken, I have been black, astonishment hath seized me.
And thou hast said unto them this word: Tears come down mine eyes night and day, And they do not cease, For, `with' a great breach, Broken hath been the virgin daughter of my people, A very grievous stroke.
From its face pained are peoples, All faces have gathered paleness.
My bowels, my bowels! I am pained `at' the walls of my heart, Make a noise for me doth My heart, I am not silent, For the voice of a trumpet I have heard, O my soul -- a shout of battle!
Who doth make my head waters, And mine eye a fountain of tears? And I weep by day and by night, For the wounded of the daughter of my people.
Truth I say in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing testimony with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great grief and unceasing pain in my heart -- for I was wishing, I myself, to be anathema from the Christ -- for my brethren, my kindred, according to the flesh,
and say to the king, `Let the king to the age live! wherefore should not my face be sad, when the city, the place of the graves of my fathers, `is' a waste, and its gates have been consumed with fire?'
For there our captors asked us the words of a song, And our spoilers -- joy: `Sing ye to us of a song of Zion.' How do we sing the song of Jehovah, On the land of a stranger? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, my right hand forgetteth! My tongue doth cleave to my palate, If I do not remember thee, If I do not exalt Jerusalem above my chief joy.
Dark `am' I, and comely, daughters of Jerusalem, As tents of Kedar, as curtains of Solomon. Fear me not, because I `am' very dark, Because the sun hath scorched me, The sons of my mother were angry with me, They made me keeper of the vineyards, My vineyard -- my own -- I have not kept.
And I hastened not from feeding after Thee, And the desperate day I have not desired, Thou -- Thou hast known, The produce of my lips, before Thy face it hath been,
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,