Jeremiah 9:21

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

Jeremiah 6:11, Jeremiah 15:7, 2 Chronicles 36:17, Ezekiel 9:5, Ezekiel 9:6, Ezekiel 21:14, Ezekiel 21:15, Amos 6:10, Amos 6:11

Reciprocal: Deuteronomy 32:25 - sword Jeremiah 6:5 - let us destroy Jeremiah 6:21 - fathers Jeremiah 11:22 - young Jeremiah 18:21 - let their young Jeremiah 18:22 - a cry Jeremiah 19:7 - I will cause Jeremiah 25:33 - they shall not Jeremiah 44:7 - to cut Jeremiah 49:26 - General Jeremiah 50:30 - her young Jeremiah 51:3 - spare Lamentations 1:16 - my children Lamentations 1:20 - abroad Lamentations 2:21 - my virgins Lamentations 4:5 - embrace Ezekiel 5:2 - shalt burn Ezekiel 16:5 - but thou Ezekiel 24:21 - that which your soul pitieth Hosea 9:13 - shall Joel 2:9 - enter Amos 8:3 - many Zephaniah 1:17 - and their blood

Cross-References

Genesis 6:9
These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, without defect in his generations. Noah walked with God.

Genesis 9:3
Every moving thing that lives shall be for you as food. As I gave the green plants to you, I have now given you everything.

Genesis 9:4
Only you shall not eat raw flesh with blood in it.

Genesis 9:15
Then I will remember my covenant that is between me and you, and between every living creature, with all flesh. And the waters of a flood will never again cause the destruction of all flesh.

Genesis 9:16
The bow shall be in the clouds, and I will see it, so as to remember the everlasting covenant between God and between every living creature, with all flesh that is upon the earth."

Proverbs 20:1
Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and any who go astray by it are not wise.

Ecclesiastes 7:20
Surely there is no one righteous on the earth who continually does good and never sins.

Romans 13:13
Let us live decently, as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and licentiousness, not in strife and jealousy.

1 Corinthians 10:12
Therefore, the one who thinks that he stands must watch out lest he fall.

Galatians 5:21
envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, things which I am telling you in advance, just as I said before, that the ones who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

For death is come up into our windows,.... Their doors being shut, bolted, and barred, they thought themselves safe, but were not; the Chaldeans scaled their walls, broke in at the tops of their houses, or at their windows, and destroyed them: for the invasion of the enemy, and the manner of their entrance into them, seem to be described. Death is here represented as a person, as it sometimes is in Scripture; see Revelation 6:8 and as coming suddenly and unawares upon men, and from whom there is no escape, or any way and method of keeping him out; bolts and bars will not do; he can climb up, and go in at the window:

and is entered into our palaces; the houses of their principal men, which were well built, and most strongly fortified, these could not keep out the enemy: and death spares none, high nor low, rich nor poor; it enters the palaces of great men, as well as the cottages of the poor. The Septuagint version is, "it is entered into our land"; and so the Arabic version; only it places the phrase, "into our land", in the preceding clause; and that of "into", or "through our windows", in this:

to cut off the children from without, and the young men from the streets; these words are not strictly to be connected with the preceding, as though they pressed the end of death, ascending up to the windows, and entering palaces, to cut off such as were in the streets; but the words are a proposition of themselves, as the distinctive accent "athnach" shows; and must be supplied after this manner, and passing through them it goes on, "to cut off", c. and so aptly describes the invading enemy climbing the walls of the city, entering at windows, or tops of houses, upon or near the walls and, having destroyed all within, goes forth into the streets, where children were at play, and slays them and into courts or markets, where young men were employed in business, and destroys them. The Jews e interpret it of famine.

e T. Bab. Bava Kama, fol. 60. 2.

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 9:21. For death is come up into our windows — Here DEATH is personified, and represented as scaling their wall; and after having slain the playful children without, and the vigorous youth employed in the labours of the field, he is now come into the private houses, to destroy the aged and infirm; and into the palaces, to destroy the king and the princes.