12 I asked, "Is there anyone around bright enough to tell us what's going on here? Anyone who has the inside story from God and can let us in on it? "Why is the country wasted? "Why no travelers in this desert?" 13 God's answer: "Because they abandoned my plain teaching. They wouldn't listen to anything I said, refused to live the way I told them to. 14 Instead they lived any way they wanted and took up with the Baal gods, who they thought would give them what they wanted - following the example of their parents." 15 And this is the consequence. God-of-the-Angel-Armies says so: "I'll feed them with pig slop. "I'll give them poison to drink. 16 "Then I'll scatter them far and wide among godless peoples that neither they nor their parents have ever heard of, and I'll send Death in pursuit until there's nothing left of them." A Life That Is All Outside but No Inside 17 A Message from God-of-the-Angel-Armies: "Look over the trouble we're in and call for help. Send for some singers who can help us mourn our loss. 18 Tell them to hurry - to help us express our loss and lament, Help us get our tears flowing, make tearful music of our crying. 19 Listen to it! Listen to that torrent of tears out of Zion: 'We're a ruined people, we're a shamed people! We've been driven from our homes and must leave our land!'" 20 Mourning women! Oh, listen to God's Message! Open your ears. Take in what he says. Teach your daughters songs for the dead and your friends the songs of heartbreak. 21 Death has climbed in through the window, broken into our bedrooms. Children on the playgrounds drop dead, and young men and women collapse at their games. 22 Speak up! "God's Message: "'Dead bodies everywhere, scattered at random like sheep and goat dung in the fields, Like wheat cut down by reapers and left to rot where it falls.'"
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Jeremiah 9:12-22
Commentary on Jeremiah 9:12-22
(Read Jeremiah 9:12-22)
In Zion the voice of joy and praise used to be heard, while the people kept close to God; but sin has altered the sound, it is now the voice of lamentation. Unhumbled hearts lament their calamity, but not their sin, which is the cause of it. Let the doors be shut ever so fast, death steals upon us. It enters the palaces of princes and great men, though stately, strongly built, and guarded. Nor are those more safe that are abroad; death cuts off even the children from without, and the young men from the streets. Hearken to the word of the Lord, and mourn with godly sorrow. This alone can bring true comfort; and it can turn the heaviest afflictions into precious mercies.