Jeremiah 9:17-22

2. Death throughout the land (Jeremiah 9:17-22)

TRANSLATION

(17) Thus says the LORD of hosts: Consider and call for the mourning women that they might come and unto the wise women send that they might come. (18) And let them hurry and lift up over us wailing that our eyes may flow with tears and our eyelids stream with water. (19) For a sound of wailing is heard from Zion. How sad it is! We have been despoiled! We are put to great shame; for we have forsaken the land; for they have cast down our dwellings. (20) For hear the word of the LORD, O women, and let your ear receive the word of His mouth, and teach your daughters wailing and every one her neighbor lamentation. (21) For death has come up into our windows, it has entered into our palaces, to cut down children in the street, young men in the broad places. (22) Speak thus! (oracle of the LORD): The carcasses of men shall fall like dung upon the surface of the field and like sheaves behind the reaper; and there is no one to gather them.

COMMENTS

In view of the impending national disaster, Jeremiah calls for professional mourning women to come and bewail the death of the nation. Such women were wise or skillful in the ways of leading public lamentation (Jeremiah 9:17). By helping others to weep and thus give vent to their emotions these women rendered a public service. One can find some measure of relief from anguish and sorrow only as he openly and outwardly expresses it. Jeremiah can seem to hear the wailing coming forth from Zion of Jerusalem. The people have been despoiled and humiliated. They have been forced to forsake the land of their birth. Their homes have been cast down by the enemy. They are confounded and confused (Jeremiah 9:19). Jeremiah calls upon the women who had been so zealous in the worship of false gods to give heed to the word of God. The day is soon approaching when the women of the nation would have to teach their daughters how to lament. So great will be the national tragedy that there will not be sufficient professional mourners. All the women will have to become involved (Jeremiah 9:20).

Why this need for universal lamentation? Death will reign supreme in the land in that day. Death creeps through the windows of homes and palaces. The Grim Reaper stalks the streets and broadplaces or market places of the city. Innocent children are cut down, young men in the flower of their youth (Jeremiah 9:21). The figure of death entering through the windows was a common one in the ancient Near East. In the Ugaritic epic of Baal, death is also described as entering by the window. Baal gave orders that no window was to be made in his palace until he had beaten his rival Moth, the god of death. After the victory over Moth, Baal issued a new order to the craftsman to construct a window. Apparently the entrance of death by the windows eventually became a common figure of speech in the Canaanite and Hebrew languages.

The picture of death throughout the land reaches its climax in Jeremiah 9:22. The first phrase, Speak thus! is abrupt and forceful and serves to arrest the attention of the hearer and draw his attention to this last dramatic announcement. The carcasses of the men of Judah who fall in battle will be left unburied. The dead bodies will be scattered over the surface of the ground like fertilizer spread by a farmer. A reaper in his haste to glean the harvest leaves many handfuls of grain in the field to rot. So would it be with the bodies of the dead. Those who survive the battles will be too few in number and too fearful to venture forth from the walled cities to give the fallen a decent burial (Jeremiah 9:22).