Jeremiah 9:20

20 Hear therefore, ye women, the word of the Lord: and let your ears receive the word of his mouth: and teach your daughters wailing: and every one her neighbour mourning.

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 hasten and take up a lamentation for us: let our eyes shed tears, and our eyelids run down with waters.

19 For a voice of wailing is heard out of Sion: How are we wasted and greatly confounded? because we have left the land, because our dwellings are cast down.

20 Hear therefore, ye women, the word of the Lord: and let your ears receive the word of his mouth: and teach your daughters wailing: and every one her neighbour mourning.

21 For death is come up through our windows, it is entered into our houses to destroy the children from without, the young men from the streets.

22 Speak: Thus saith the Lord: Even the carcass of man shall fall as dung upon the face of the country, and as grass behind the back of the mower, and there is none to gather it.