Jeremiah 9:18

18 and let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters.

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 also 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 Yahweh of Hosts, Consider you, and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for the skillful women, that they may come:

18 and let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters.

19 For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion, How are we ruined! we are greatly confounded, because we have forsaken the land, because they have cast down our dwellings.

20 Yet hear the word of Yahweh, you women, and let your ear receive the word of his mouth; and teach your daughters wailing, and everyone her neighbor lamentation.