Jeremiah 9:18

18 Let them come quickly and take up a lament over us, that our eyes may overflow with tears, and our eyelids may gush with water.

Jeremiah 9:18 Meaning and Commentary

Jeremiah 9:18

And let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us
Deliver out a mournful song, as the Arabic version; setting forth their miseries and distresses, and affecting their minds with them. The prophet puts himself among the people, as being a party concealed in their sufferings, and sympathizing with them, as well as to show the certainty of then and how soon they would be involved in them: that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with
waters;
or balls of the eye, as the Targum and Kimchi; these hyperbolical expressions are used to express the greatness of the calamity, and that no mourning was equal to it; see ( Jeremiah 9:1 ) .

Jeremiah 9:18 In-Context

16 I will scatter them among the nations that neither they nor their fathers have known, and I will send a sword after them until I have finished them off.”

17 This is what the LORD of Hosts says: “Take note, and summon the wailing women; send for the most skillful among them.

18 Let them come quickly and take up a lament over us, that our eyes may overflow with tears, and our eyelids may gush with water.

19 For the sound of wailing is heard from Zion: ‘How devastated we are! How great is our shame! For we have abandoned the land because our dwellings have been torn down.’”

20 Now, O women, hear the word of the LORD. Open your ears to the word of His mouth. Teach your daughters to wail, and one another to lament.