Jeremiah 9:1

JEREMIAH 9

SORROWFUL LAMENT FOR FALLEN ISRAEL

The theme of this whole chapter is given here in Jeremiah 9:1, which in the Hebrew Bible concludes Jeremiah 8, to which it also is appropriate.

The pitifully wicked and immoral behavior of God's Once Chosen People had at last reached its terminal extent; and the horrible punishment which their apostasy so richly deserved was soon to be executed upon the degenerate, reprobate nation. The lament expressed here was not only applicable to the fallen condition of ancient Israel; but the words are just as appropriate today for the millions of people who have forsaken their first love, and have chosen to wallow in the sensuous pleasures of sin for a season, rather than to live by the true standards of God's Word.

Halley's thumbnail summary of this chapter is as good as any we have seen.

"Jeremiah, a man of sorrows, in the midst of a people abandoned to everything vile (Jeremiah 9:2-9), weeping day and night at the thought of impending retribution, moved about among them, begging, pleading, persuading, threatening, entreating, imploring that they turn from their wickedness. But in vain."

Jeremiah 9:1

"Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people."

Jeremiah had already wept over the condition of Israel as much as it was possible for him to weep; and here he expressed a wish for the ability to weep even more. Henry pointed out that in Hebrew the same word signifies "both the eye and a fountain, as if in this land of sorrows our eyes were designed rather for weeping than for seeing. And while we find our hearts such fountains of sin, it is fit that our eyes should be fountains of tears."[2]