Jeremiah 9:15

Lexham English Bible

Contextual Overview

¹² Who is the wise man that can understand this? And to whom has the mouth of Yahweh spoken, so that he may declare it? Why is the land destroyed? It is laid waste like the desert so that no one passes through." ¹³ And Yahweh said, "Because of their forsaking my law that I set before them, and they have not obeyed my voice, and have not walked in it, ¹⁴ but they went after the stubbornness of their heart, and after the Baals, which their ancestors taught them." ¹⁵ Therefore thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, "Look, I am feeding this people wormwood, and providing drink for them, water of poison, ¹⁶ and I will scatter them among the nations that they have not known, they and their ancestors, and I will send the sword after them until I bring them to an end." ¹⁷ Thus says Yahweh of hosts: "Consider closely, and call for the wailing women, so that they come, and for the skillful women, so that they come. ¹⁸ And let them hasten, and let them lift up wailing over us, so that our eyes may melt with tears, and our eyelids may flow with water. ¹⁹ For a sound of wailing is heard from Zion, ‘How we are devastated! We are very ashamed because we have left the land, because they have overthrown our dwelling places.' ²⁰ For hear, O women, the word of Yahweh, and let your ear receive the word of his mouth, and teach your daughters a lamentation, and each woman her neighbor a lament. ²¹ For death has come into our windows, it has entered into our fortresses, to cut off the children from the streets, the young men from the public squares.

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

I will: Jeremiah 8:14, Jeremiah 23:15, Jeremiah 25:15, Psalms 60:3, Psalms 69:21, Psalms 75:8, Psalms 80:5, Isaiah 2:17, Isaiah 2:22, Lamentations 3:15, Lamentations 3:19, Revelation 8:11

Reciprocal: Deuteronomy 29:18 - among you a root Lamentations 3:5 - gall Ezekiel 34:16 - I will feed Acts 8:23 - the gall

Cross-References

Genesis 9:8
And God said to Noah and to his sons with him,

Genesis 9:10
and with every living creature that is with you—the birds, the animals, and every animal of the earth with you, from all that came out of the ark to all the animals of the earth.

Exodus 28:12
And you will set the two stones on the ephod's shoulder pieces as stones of remembrance for the Israelites, and Aaron will bear their names before Yahweh on his two shoulder pieces for remembrance.

Deuteronomy 7:9
So know that Yahweh your God, he is God, the trustworthy God, maintaining his covenant and his loyal love with those who love him and with those who keep his commandments to a thousand generations,

1 Kings 8:23
and he said, "O Yahweh, God of Israel, there is no god like you in the heavens above or on the earth beneath, keeping the covenant and the loyal love for your servants who are walking before you with all their heart.

Nehemiah 9:32
"And now our God, the great, mighty, and awesome God who keeps his covenant and loyal love, do not belittle in your presence all of the hardship that is found in us, our kings, our officials, our priests, our prophets, our ancestors, and all of our people, from the days of the kings of Assyria until this day.

Psalms 106:45
And he remembered his covenant with them, and relented based on the abundance of his loyal love.

Jeremiah 14:21
You must not spurn us for the sake of your name, you must not dishonor your glorious throne. Remember us! You must not break your covenant with us.

Ezekiel 16:60
And I, I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish with you an everlasting covenant.

Luke 1:72
to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant,

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Therefore thus saith the Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel,.... He calls himself "the Lord God of hosts", of armies above and below, in heaven and in earth, in opposition to Baalim, the idols of the Gentiles; which word signifies "lords"; which, though there be many who are called so, there is but one God, and one Lord, who is God over all, and "the God of Israel"; who had chosen them, and distinguished them by the blessings of his goodness; and yet they had forsaken him, and followed after other gods; by which the eyes of his glory were provoked, and he was determined to chastise them for it:

behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood; that is, with straits or difficulties, as the Septuagint version; with bitter afflictions; such are not joyous, but grievous; which are irksome and disagreeable, as bitter things, and particularly wormwood, are to the taste. The Targum is,

"I will bring tribulation upon them, bitter as wormwood:''

and give them water of gall to drink; meaning either of the entrails of a beast so called, or of the juice of the herb hemlock, as the word is rendered in Hosea 10:4, as Kimchi; or of the poison of a serpent, as Jarchi; and so the Targum,

"and I will give them the cup of cursing to drink as the heads of serpents:''

signifying that their punishment would be very severe, though just.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

The punishment described in general terms in the preceding three verses is now detailed at great length.

Jeremiah 9:10

The habitations i. e - the temporary encampments of the shepherds (see Jeremiah 6:3).

So that none can ... - Or, “They are parched up, with no man to pass through them; neither do they hear the voice of cattle; from the birds of the heaven even to the beasts they “are fled, they are gone.”

Jeremiah 9:11

Dragons - Rather, jackals.

Jeremiah 9:12

For what the land perisheth ... - This is the question proposed for consideration. The prophet calls upon the wise man to explain his question; that question being, Wherefore did the land perish? He follows it by the assertion of a fact: “It is parched like the wilderness with no man to pass through.”

Jeremiah 9:13

The cause of the chastisement about to fall upon Jerusalem, was their desertion of the divine Law.

Jeremiah 9:14

Imagination - Or, as in the margin.

Which their fathers taught them - It was not the sin of one generation that brought upon them chastisement: it was a sin, which had been handed down from father to son.

Jeremiah 9:15

I will feed them ... - Rather, I am feeding them. The present participle used here, followed by three verbs in the future, shows that the judgment has beam, of which the successive stages are given in the next clause.

Wormwood - See Deuteronomy 29:18, note, and for “water of gall,” Jeremiah 8:14, note.

Jeremiah 9:16

This verse is taken from Leviticus 26:33. The fulfillment of what had been so long before appointed as the penalty for the violation of Yahweh’s covenant is one of the most remarkable proofs that prophecy was something more than human foresight.

Till I have consumed them - See Jeremiah 4:27 note. How is this “consuming” consistent with the promise to the contrary there given? Because it is limited by the terms of Jeremiah 9:7. Previously to Nebuchadnezzars destruction of Jerusalem God removed into safety those in whom the nation should revive.

Jeremiah 9:17

The mourning women - Hired to attend at funerals, and by their skilled wailings aid the real mourners in giving vent to their grief. Hence, they are called “cunning,” literally “wise” women, wisdom being constantly used in Scripture for anything in which people are trained.

Jeremiah 9:18

Take up a wailing for us - i. e., for the nation once God’s chosen people, but long spiritually dead.

Jeremiah 9:19

Forsaken - Or, left: forced to abandon the land.

Because our dwellings ... - Rather, “because they have east down our dwellings.” The whole verse is a description of their sufferings. See 2 Kings 25:1-12.

Jeremiah 9:20

The command is addressed to the women because it was more especially their part to express the general feelings of the nation. See 1 Samuel 18:6; 2 Samuel 1:24. The women utter now the death-wail over the perishing nation. They are to teach their daughters and neighbors the “lamentation, i. e., dirge,” because the harvest of death would be so large that the number of trained women would not suffice.

Jeremiah 9:21

Death is come up ... - i. e., death steals silently like a thief upon his victims, and makes such havoc that there are no children left to go “without,” nor young men to frequent the open spaces in the city.

Jeremiah 9:22

The “handful” means the little bundle of grain which the reaper gathers on his arm with three or four strokes of his sickle, and then lays down. Behind the reaper came one whose business it was to gather several of these bundles, and bind them into a sheaf. Thus, death strews the ground with corpses as thickly as these handfuls lie upon the reaped land, but the corpses lie there unheeded.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Jeremiah 9:15. I will feed them - with wormwood — They shall have the deepest sorrow and heaviest affliction. They shall have poison instead of meat and drink.