Jeremiah 9:18

18 let them make haste 1and raise a wailing over us, 2that our eyes may run down with tears and our eyelids flow 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 whom neither they nor their fathers have known, and I will send the sword after them, until I have consumed them."
17 Thus says the LORD of hosts: "Consider, and call for the mourning women to come; send for the skillful women to come;
18 let them make haste and raise a wailing over us, that our eyes may run down with tears and our eyelids flow with water.
19 For a sound of wailing is heard from Zion: 'How we are ruined! We are utterly shamed, because we have left the land, because they have cast down our dwellings.'"
20 Hear, O women, the word of the LORD, and let your ear receive the word of his mouth; teach to your daughters a lament, and each to her neighbor a dirge.

Cross References 2

  • 1. Amos 5:16; [Matthew 9:23; Mark 5:38]
  • 2. ver. 1; Jeremiah 14:17
The English Standard Version is published with the permission of Good News Publishers.