CHAPTER 9

(600 B.C.)

JEREMIAHS LAMENT FOR THE PEOPLES SIN AND THE PENDING JUDGMENT

¹Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the dead of the daughter of my people! (Jeremiah was called the weeping Prophet, and for good reason! After seeing what is coming upon his people, he cannot help but weep, even day and night. The dead will be many!)

²Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men. (Because of the vileness of Jerusalem, the Prophet wanted to go from them, but yet he could not go, because he was the only one standing between them and total destruction. However, they did not regard him at all and, in fact, desired to kill him, and would have succeeded were it not for the delivering Power of the Lord.

The word treacherous is used because they actually committed Spiritual High Treason!)

³And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the Earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not Me, sa ys the LORD. (This Verse could be translated, They bend their tongues as it were their bow for falsehoods; and they are grown rich in the land, but not by speaking truth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they refuse to recognize Me, says Jehovah.)

⁴Take you heed every one of his neighbour, and trust you not in any brother: for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbour will walk with slanders. (For every brother will utterly supplant, has reference to Jacob, who was a supplanter, or a deceiver. This was before Jacob, by the Power of God, was changed to Israel, the Prince with God.

Slanders have to do with tale-bearing, whether true or false.)

⁵And they will deceive everyone his neighbour, and will not speak the truth: they have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity. (And they will deceive everyone his neighbor, speaks of the utter disposition of the entirety of the people. They were deceived, so it was easy for them to be deceivers. Such are Satan and his followers!

They have taught their tongue to speak lies, is an intimation of the unnaturalness of vice. Not only did they lie, but they practiced lying.)

⁶Your habitation is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know Me, sa ys the LORD. (The idea of this Passage is that some of these individuals may feign an appreciation for Jeremiah and his Message; nevertheless, the Holy Spirit tells him here that these individuals cannot speak the Truth, and should not be trusted.

Through deceit they refuse to know Me, means that they refused to be converted to the Lord, because that would cost them the loss of the money gained by fraud.)

⁷Therefore thus says the LORD of Hosts, Behold, I will melt them, and try them; for how shall I do for the daughter of My People? (The furnace for the melting, at least in this instance, would be the 70-year captivity in Babylon. The question, For how shall I do for the daughter of My People?, rather asks the question, How shall I act? or How otherwise should I act?, referring to Jehovah!)

⁸Their tongue is as an arrow shot out; it speaks deceit: one speaks peaceably to his neighbour with his mouth, but in heart he lays his wait. (Their tongue is as an arrow shot out, refers to their tongue being a sharpened arrow designed to destroy. It speaks deceit, refers to the fact that it can speak nothing else!)

⁹Shall I not visit them for these things? says the LORD: shall not My Soul be avenged on such a nation as this? (The word visit means to punish.)

¹⁰For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing, and for the habitations of the wilderness a lamentation, because they are burned up, so that none can pass through them; neither can men hear the voice of the cattle; both the fowl of the heavens and the beast are fled; they are gone. (The word habitations refers to pastures. The exclamation of this Verse is of a desolation so total that even the birds cannot find subsistence. They are gone, speaks of a denuding of Judah so severe that nothing is left!)

¹¹And I will make Jerusalem heaps, and a den of dragons; and I will make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant. (Once again, the Holy Spirit uses the words, I will, referring to his total control over what was to be done to Judah and Jerusalem.)

¹²Who is the wise man, who may understand this? and who is he to whom the mouth of the LORD has spoken, that he may declare it, for what the land perishes and is burned up like a wilderness, that none passes through? (The question, Who is the wise man, who may understand this?, refers to the fact that there were many men in Jerusalem who were worldly-wise, but none who were spiritually wise.)

¹³And the LORD says, Because they have forsaken My Law which I set before them, and have not obeyed My Voice, neither walked therein (the doctrine of this Verse, and several of the following, is that unrenewed men, however intelligent, are incapable of recognizing the Hand of God in the private or public calamities that come upon them; that it needs a Revelation from the Holy Spirit to awake them to the fact that such calamities are Gods just Judgment; and that those who are thus enlightened are responsible to declare and explain the true nature and the cause of the suffering experienced);

¹⁴But have walked after the imagination of their own heart, and after Baalim, which their fathers taught them (this Scripture tells us that the Word of God, and not the teaching of the fathers, is the only authoritative and infallible rule of faith and obedience; for the fathers can oppose Truth and, in fact, often do, and consequently perish with their pupils):

¹⁵Therefore thus says the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink. (The Water of gall to drink is a fluid secreted by the liver, which is extremely bitter!)

¹⁶I will scatter them also among the heathen, whom neither they nor their fathers have known: and I will send a sword after them, till I have consumed them. (The pronoun them refers to those who follow the imagination of their own heart, and not the Law of God. The error taught by their fathers will now have its bitter result in captivity.)

¹⁷Thus says the LORD of Hosts, Consider you, and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for cunning women, that they may come (the sense of this Passage is that so many are going to die that the usual practice of hiring individuals to weep and wail at funerals would have to be increased manyfold):

¹⁸And 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. (The idea of this Passage is that the mourning women will weep, not because they are paid for such, but because of the agony and destruction that is everywhere.)

¹⁹For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion, How are we spoiled! we are greatly confounded, because we have forsaken the land, because our dwellings have cast us out. (When the time of destruction would come, which would be about 5 to 7 years in the future, instead of then ridiculing Jeremiah, a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion, because of the terrible destruction.)

²⁰Yet hear the Word of the LORD, O you women, and let your ear receive the word of His Mouth, and teach your daughters wailing, and everyone her neighbour lamentation. (The first word of Verse 20 could very well have read, Yes; for it was just that the women should share in the suffering, because they had urged their husbands to be idolaters.)

²¹For death is come up into our windows, and is entered into our palaces, to cut off the children from without, and the young men from the streets. (The statement is hyperbole. No one would really be hired to weep, because every family in Judah would be weeping uncontrollably. But such is given by the Holy Spirit accordingly that it may impress upon the listener the severity of that which is coming.)

²²Speak, Thus says the LORD, Even the carcases of men shall fall as dung upon the open field, and as the handful after the harvestman, and none shall gather them. (In this Verse, the proud Hebrews are compared to dung, and to grains of corn trampled into the ground by the feet of the harvestman and, therefore, worthless to be gleaned.)

KNOWLEDGE OF GOD IS MANS GLORY

²³Thus says the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches:

²⁴But let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the LORD who exercises Lovingkindness, Judgment, and Righteousness, in the Earth: for in these things I delight, says the LORD. (Verse 23 proclaims the fact that nothing that man has, irrespective of its seeming power, will do in the time of adversity; however, Verse 24 tells us what will stand the test, and that alone, which is the Word of God!)

²⁵Behold, the days come, says the LORD, that I will punish all them who are circumcised with the uncircumcised (the idea is that these were circumcised in the flesh, but not in the heart);

²⁶Egypt, and Judah, and Edom, and the Children of Ammon, and Moab, and all who are in the utmost corners, who dwell in the wilderness: for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the House of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart. (The prediction here was that the Cup of Wrath for the people of Judah would have this added bitterness of having to be drunk in fellowship with the neighboring nations whom they so despised. These nations practiced circumcision, as Judah did; and, like Judah, they were uncircumcised in heart.)