Jeremiah 9:20

20 I said, "Listen to the Lord, you women, and pay attention to his words. Teach your daughters how to mourn, and your friends how to sing a funeral song.

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 The people said, "Tell them to hurry and sing a funeral song for us, until our eyes fill with tears, and our eyelids are wet from crying."

19 Listen to the sound of crying in Zion: "We are ruined! We are completely disgraced! We must leave our land; our homes have been torn down."

20 I said, "Listen to the Lord, you women, and pay attention to his words. Teach your daughters how to mourn, and your friends how to sing a funeral song.

21 Death has come in through our windows and entered our palaces; it has cut down the children in the streets and the young men in the marketplaces.

22 Dead bodies are scattered everywhere, like piles of manure on the fields, like grain cut and left behind by the reapers, grain that no one gathers. This is what the Lord has told me to say."