Jeremiah 9:18

18 let them quickly raise a dirge over us, so that 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 nations that neither they nor their ancestors 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 skilled women to come;
18 let them quickly raise a dirge over us, so 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 ears receive the word of his mouth; teach to your daughters a dirge, and each to her neighbor a lament.
New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.