Jeremía 9:17

Heilögum Biblíunni

17 Takið eftir og kallið til harmkonur, að þær komi, og sendið til hinna vitru kvenna, að þær komi

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

call: 2 Chronicles 35:25, Job 3:8, Ecclesiastes 12:5, Amos 5:16, Amos 5:17, Matthew 9:23, Mark 5:38

the mourning women: Those whose office it was to sing mournful dirges, and make public lamentations at funerals.

Reciprocal: 2 Samuel 1:17 - lamented Ezra 2:65 - two hundred Isaiah 51:19 - who shall Jeremiah 6:26 - make thee Jeremiah 7:29 - and take Jeremiah 9:20 - and teach Jeremiah 48:17 - bemoan Lamentations 1:2 - weepeth Lamentations 2:18 - let tears Ezekiel 19:1 - take Ezekiel 21:6 - Sigh Ezekiel 27:2 - General Ezekiel 28:12 - take up Ezekiel 32:16 - General Joel 1:8 - Lament Micah 2:4 - and lament Matthew 2:18 - lamentation Matthew 11:17 - piped Luke 8:52 - all

Gill's Notes on the Bible

Thus saith the Lord of hosts, consider ye,.... The punishment that was just coming upon them, as Kimchi; or the words that the Lord was about to say unto them; as follows:

and call for the mourning women, that they may come; the same with the "praeficae" among the Romans; persons that were sent for, and hired by, the relations of the dead, to raise up their mourning; and who, by their dishevelled hair, naked breasts, and beatings thereon, and mournful voice, and what they said in their doleful ditties in praise of the dead, greatly moved upon the affections of the surviving relatives, and produced tears from them. This was a custom that early prevailed among the Jews, and long continued with them; and was so common, that, according to the Misnic doctors c, the poorest man in Israel, when his wife died, never had less than two pipes, and one mourning woman; :-. Now, in order to show what a calamity was coming on them, and what mourning there would be, and what occasion for it; the Lord by the prophet, not as approving, but deriding the practice, bids them call for the mourning women to assist them in their lamentations:

and send for cunning women, that they may come; such as were expert in this business, and could mimic mourning well, and had the art of moving the affections with their voice and gestures.

c Miss. Cetubot, c. 4. sect. 4.

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 9:17. Call for the mourning women — Those whose office it was to make lamentations at funerals, and to bewail the dead, for which they received pay. This custom continues to the present in Asiatic countries. In Ireland this custom also prevails, which no doubt their ancestors brought from the east. I have often witnessed it, and have given a specimen of this elsewhere. See the note on Matthew 9:23. The first lamentations for the dead consisted only in the sudden bursts of inexpressible grief, like that of David over his son Absalom, 2 Samuel 19:4. But as men grew refined, it was not deemed sufficient for the surviving relatives to vent their sorrows in these natural, artless expressions of wo, but they endeavoured to join others as partners in their sorrows. This gave rise to the custom of hiring persons to weep at funerals, which the Phrygians and Greeks borrowed from the Hebrews. Women were generally employed on these occasions, because the tender passions being predominant in this sex, they succeeded better in their parts; and there were never wanting persons who would let out their services to hire on such occasions. Their lamentations were sung to the pipe as we learn from Matthew 9:23. See the funeral ceremonies practiced at the burial of Hector, as described by Homer: -

Οἱ δ' επει εισαγαγον κλυτα δωματα, τον μεν επειτα

Τρητοις εν λεχεεσσι θεσαν, παρα δ' εἱσαν αοιδους,

Θρηνων εξαρχους, οἱ τε στονοεσσαν αοιδην

Οἱ μεν αρ' εθρηνεον, επι δε στεναχοντο γυναικες.

IL. lib. xxiv., ver. 719.

"Arrived within the royal house, they stretched

The breathless Hector on a sumptuous bed,

And singers placed beside him, who should chant

The strain funereal; they with many a groan

The dirge began; and still at every close

The female train with many a groan replied."

COWPER.

St. Jerome tells us that even to his time this custom continued in Judea; that women at funerals, with dishevelled hair and naked breasts, endeavoured in a modulated voice to invite others to lament with them. The poem before us, from the seventeenth to the twenty-second verse, is both an illustration and confirmation of what has been delivered on this subject, and worthy of the reader's frequent perusal, on account of its affecting pathos, moral sentiments, and fine images, particularly in the twenty-first verse, where death is described in as animated a prosopopoeia as can be conceived. See Lowth's twenty-second Prelection, and Dodd. The nineteenth verse is supposed to be the funeral song of the women.

"How are we spoiled!

We are greatly confounded!

For we have forsaken the land;

Because they have destroyed our dwellings."