Commentary - Jeremiah 9:17-22

Bird's-eye view

In this section of Jeremiah, the prophet, having just articulated the profound reasons for God's judgment, now summons the nation to a formal, state-sponsored funeral. The time for warnings is past; the time for weeping has arrived. But this is not the tender sorrow of personal grief. This is a covenantal summons to a national lamentation, a recognition that the death of the nation is now a settled reality. God, through Jeremiah, commands the people to hire professional mourners, the skillful wailing women, to teach the entire populace how to grieve properly for their own demise. The imagery is stark and terrifying: death is personified as an intruder climbing through the windows, snatching children from the streets and young men from the squares. The passage culminates in a horrifying oracle from Yahweh Himself, describing the land littered with unburied corpses, left to rot like dung or discarded sheaves of grain. This is the graphic outworking of the covenant curses they had for so long ignored. It is a judicial sentence of death, and the only appropriate response left is to learn how to wail.

The central point is the finality and totality of the coming judgment. The social fabric will be so torn that even the most basic rites of burial will be abandoned. This is not just a military defeat; it is a complete societal collapse, a divine de-creation of a people who had abandoned their Creator. The call for professional mourners underscores the depth of the tragedy, the people have forgotten even how to grieve their own sins, and must be taught. It is a picture of utter desolation, brought about by persistent, high-handed covenant rebellion.

Outline

Context In Jeremiah

This passage follows directly on the heels of God's explanation for the coming disaster. In Jeremiah 9:12-16, God answers the question of "Why has the land been ruined?" The answer is simple and direct: "It is because they have forsaken my law... and have not obeyed my voice or walked in accord with it, but have stubbornly followed their own hearts and have gone after the Baals, as their fathers taught them." The judgment is not arbitrary. It is the predictable, promised consequence of idolatry. Therefore, the call to mourning in our text is the logical and necessary next step. The verdict has been read, the sentence has been passed, and now the court officers, in this case, the mourning women, are being summoned to carry out the public lamentation that accompanies a death sentence. This section functions as the emotional and liturgical response to the legal declaration of the preceding verses, setting the stage for the further pronouncements of judgment that characterize Jeremiah's ministry.

Key Issues

The Liturgy of Judgment

We live in a therapeutic age that views grief as a private, internal process. But in the biblical world, grief, especially national grief, was a public, structured, and liturgical affair. When God tells Judah to "call for the mourning women," He is invoking a well-known cultural institution. These were women skilled in the art of lamentation, professional keeners who could lead a community in expressing a sorrow too deep for ordinary words. Their job was to articulate the horror of the situation and to provoke a response of genuine weeping and wailing from the people.

But God is doing something more here than simply following a cultural script. He is commandeering a human institution for a divine purpose. This is not just a funeral for a loved one; it is the funeral for an entire covenant nation. The judgment is so severe, the sin so deep, that the people themselves are spiritually numb. They don't know how to grieve anymore. Their hearts are so calloused by idolatry that they have to be taught how to weep over their own destruction. God is essentially saying, "You are dead, but you are too dead to even realize it. So I will hire professionals to model for you the only sane response to what is about to happen." This is a profound indictment of their spiritual state. The liturgy of judgment must be taught to them because they have long since abandoned the liturgy of true worship.

Verse by Verse Commentary

17 Thus says Yahweh of hosts, “Carefully consider and call for the mourning women, that they may come; And send for the skillful women, that they may come!

The command comes with the full authority of the covenant Lord, Yahweh of hosts, the commander of heaven's armies. This is a military summons, but not for soldiers. The people are to "carefully consider", this is a command to think, to reason, to look at the facts of their situation and come to the only logical conclusion. And that conclusion is that it is time to plan a funeral. They are to call for the "mourning women," and in the parallel clause, the "skillful women." This refers to professional women who were experts in composing and chanting dirges and funeral laments. The nation's condition is terminal, and the first order of business is to arrange for the official, public announcement of its death.

18 Let them make haste and take up a wailing for us, That our eyes may shed tears And our eyelids flow with water.

There is an urgency here. "Let them make haste." The judgment is not a distant threat; it is imminent. The purpose of this professional wailing is explicitly stated: it is to provoke a genuine emotional response from the people. "That our eyes may shed tears." It is a sad state of affairs when a people must hire others to teach them how to cry. Their hearts were hard, their eyes were dry. They had sinned away their capacity for godly sorrow. The wailing of the professionals was meant to be a catalyst, to break through the stone-cold apathy of the people and produce real tears of grief for their condition.

19 For a voice of wailing is heard from Zion, ‘How we are destroyed! We are put to great shame, For we have left the land Because they have cast down our dwellings.’ ”

Here Jeremiah provides the lyrics for the funeral dirge. The wailing is not contentless noise; it is a confession. The song begins from Zion, the very center of their national and religious life, now the epicenter of the destruction. The theme is twofold. First, utter ruin: "How we are destroyed! We are put to great shame." Their pride would be replaced by humiliation. Second, the reason is dispossession and exile: "For we have left the land, Because they have cast down our dwellings." The "they" here refers to the invading Babylonians, but behind them is the hand of God, enforcing the curses of the covenant which promised exile for disobedience (Deut 28:64).

20 Indeed, hear the word of Yahweh, O you women, And let your ear receive the word of His mouth; Teach your daughters wailing, And everyone her neighbor a funeral lamentation.

The command is now broadened. It is not enough to hire professionals. The skill of lamentation must be passed down to every household. The women of the nation are addressed directly, and they are to teach their own daughters and their neighbors. This is a grassroots movement of grief. The tragedy will be so all-encompassing that every single family will be a house of mourning. The skill of wailing will be a necessary life skill, more important than cooking or weaving, because death will be the central reality of their lives. This is a reversal of the joyful teaching a mother should give a daughter; instead of wedding songs, they must learn funeral dirges.

21 For death has come up through our windows; It has entered our palaces To cut off the infants from the streets, The choice men from the open squares.

Now the reason for the universal mourning is given in stark, personified terms. Death is depicted as a relentless burglar or assassin. It doesn't bother with the door; it climbs in through the windows, a place of vulnerability. No place is safe, not even the fortified "palaces" of the wealthy and powerful. And the victims are the most vulnerable and the most valuable. Death cuts off the "infants from the streets," ending the nation's future. It also cuts off the "choice men from the open squares," the young, strong men who represent the nation's strength and vitality. The picture is one of indiscriminate, pervasive slaughter that strikes at the heart of the nation's present and future.

22 Speak, “Thus declares Yahweh, ‘The corpses of men will fall like dung on the open field And like the sheaf after the reaper, But no one will gather them.’ ”

Jeremiah is commanded to speak this final, horrifying word directly from God. This is the climax of the passage. The imagery is utterly degrading. The dead bodies of the men of Judah will be so numerous and so little regarded that they will be like animal manure (dung) scattered on a field for fertilizer. The second image is of a "sheaf after the reaper." When a reaper cuts grain, he leaves the cut sheaves in rows behind him for others to come and gather. But here, the corpses are like sheaves that no one bothers to collect. The point is emphatic: "no one will gather them." To be left unburied was one of the most profound curses in the ancient world, a sign of ultimate shame and rejection. This is the final state of the covenant-breaking people, not just dead, but dishonored, discarded, and left to rot on the land they defiled.

Application

This is a hard passage. Our instinct is to recoil from such graphic descriptions of judgment. But we must not. This passage is a stark reminder that sin has consequences and that God is not a celestial grandfather who winks at rebellion. The covenant has blessings for obedience and curses for disobedience, and God is faithful to His word, on both counts. The people of Judah had been warned for centuries, and they had stubbornly refused to listen. This judgment, as horrible as it is, is a demonstration of God's justice.

For the Christian, this passage should drive us to our knees in gratitude. Why are our corpses not scattered like dung on a field? It is because the corpse of another was taken down from a cross and laid in a borrowed tomb. Jesus Christ, on the cross, absorbed the full measure of the covenant curse that we deserved. He was cut off from the land of the living. He endured the ultimate shame and rejection from God so that we would not have to. He became the curse for us (Gal 3:13).

Therefore, our response to sin should be the very thing Judah had to be taught: genuine lamentation. We should not be casual about our sin. We should learn to wail over it, not because we fear being left unburied, but because we understand that our sin is what nailed the Son of God to the tree. Godly sorrow, the kind that leads to repentance, is the only appropriate response. And that sorrow is always met, not with a hired mourner, but with the Comforter Himself, who assures us that because of Christ, our sins are forgiven, our shame is removed, and our future is not a desolate field, but a glorious city.