Jeremiah 9:18

18 Let them come quickly to raise a lament over us^[a] so that our eyes may overflow with tears, our eyelids soaked with weeping.

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 nations that they and their fathers have not known. I will send a sword after them until I have finished them off."

17 This is what the Lord of Hosts says: Consider, and summon the women who mourn; send for the skillful women.

18 Let them come quickly to raise a lament over us so that our eyes may overflow with tears, our eyelids soaked with weeping.

19 For a sound of lamentation is heard from Zion: How devastated we are. We are greatly ashamed, for we have abandoned the land; our dwellings have been torn down.

20 Now hear the word of the Lord, you women. Pay attention to the word of His mouth. Teach your daughters a lament and one another a dirge,

Footnotes

• [a] Jr 9:10