Jeremiah 9:20

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.

Jeremiah 9:20 Meaning and Commentary

Jeremiah 9:20

Yet hear the word of the Lord, O ye women
Not the mourning women, but others who had lost their husbands and their children, and had just reason for real mourning; and therefore they are called upon to it, not only because they were more tenderhearted than men, as Kimchi observes; or because they were more attentive to the hearing of the word of God than men; but because of the paucity of men, such numbers being slain in the siege, and by the sword; and of the loss the women had sustained, see ( Jeremiah 9:22 ) : and let your ear receive the word of his mouth;
by his prophets; so the Targum,

``let your ear hearken to the words of his prophets:''

and teach your daughters wailing.
The Arabic version, "a mournful song"; but not the daughters of the mourning women are meant; but the real daughters of those who had lost their husbands or children; since it follows: and everyone her neighbour lamentation;
signifying that the mortality among them would be very universal, not a family escaping; which is described in the next verses. This wailing and lamentation was made by responses, according to the Jews; for they say ^F4,

``what is lamentation? when one speaks, and all the rest answer after her, as it is written in ( Jeremiah 9:20 ) .''

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FOOTNOTES:

F4 Misn. Moed Katon, c. 3. sect. 9.

Jeremiah 9:20 In-Context

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.

21 For death has climbed in through our windows; it has entered our fortresses to cut off the children from the streets, the young men from the town squares.

22 Declare that this is what the LORD says: “The corpses of men will fall like dung upon the open field, like newly cut grain behind the reaper, with no one to gather it.”