Jeremiah 9:17

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.

Jeremiah 9:17 . Consider ye, and call for the mourning women — Consider the evil circumstances you are in, which call for mourning and lamentation: and since you yourselves are not sufficiently affected with the dangers that threaten you, send for those women whose profession it is to mourn at funerals, and upon other sorrowful occasions, and let their lamentations excite true sorrow in you. The prophet seems here to compare the Jewish state to a person dead, and going to be buried, and therefore calls upon the people to send for those who used to be hired to make lamentations and wailings at funerals. The reader will observe, “it was an ancient custom of the Hebrews, at funerals, and on other like occasions, to make use of hired mourners, whose profession it was to exhibit in public all the signs and gestures of immoderate and frantic grief, and by their loud outcries and doleful songs to excite a real passion of sorrow in others. Women were generally employed in this office, either because it was an office more suitable to the softness of a female mind, or because the more tender passions being predominant in that sex, they succeeded better in their parts; nor were there ever wanting those artists well instructed in the discipline of mourning, and ready to hire out their lamentations and tears on any emergency.

It was the chief excellence of other arts to imitate nature; it was likewise esteemed so in this; their funeral dirges, therefore, were composed in imitation of those which had been poured forth by genuine and sincere grief. Their sentences were short, querulous, pathetic, simple, and unadorned; somewhat laboured indeed, because they were composed in metre, and to be sung to the pipe, as we learn from Matthew 9:23 ; and from Homer,” where, speaking of Hector’s funeral, he says, — — Παρα δ ’ εισαν αοιδους , Θρηνων εξαρχους , οιτε σονοεσσαν αοιδην , Οι μεν αρ ’ εθρηνεον , επι δε σεναχοντο γυναικες . ILIAD, Ω . 720. A melancholy choir attend around, With plaintive sighs, and music’s solemn sound; Alternately they sing, alternate flow Th’ obedient tears, melodious in their wo. See POPE’S IL., book 24. ver. 900. Jerome tells us, in his comment on this verse, that the practice was continued in Judea down to his days; “That women, at funerals, with dishevelled hair, and naked breasts, endeavoured, in a modulated voice, to unite others in lamentation with them.” Frequent allusions to this custom are to be met with in Scripture, particularly 2 Chronicles 35:25 , where the singing men and singing women are said to have made it a constant rule, after King Josiah’s death, to commemorate that excellent prince in all their future dirges or lamentations, as one in whom the public in general had sustained an irreparable loss.

Verses 17-22. - A new scene is introduced. To give an idea of the greatness of the impending blow, all the skilled mourners are sent for to raise the cry of lamentation. But no, this is not enough. So large will be the number of the dead that all the women must take their part in the doleful office. The description of the mourning women is as true to modern as to ancient life in the East. "And, indeed," says Dr. Shaw, a thoughtful traveler and an ornament of Oxford in the dark eighteenth century, "they perform their parts with such proper sounds, gestures, and commotions, that they rarely fail to work up the assembly into some extraordinary pitch of thoughtfulness and sorrow" ('Travels in Barbary and the Levant,' 2nd edit., p. 242; comp. Amos 5:16 ; Ecclesiastes 12:5 ). Jeremiah 9:17

17 . cunning ] i.e. skilled . Cp. Genesis 25:27 ; 1 Samuel 16:18 ; 2 Chronicles 26:15 . 17, 18 . “There are in every city and community women exceedingly cunning in this business.… When a fresh company of sympathisers comes in, these women ‘make haste’ to ‘take up a wailing’ that the newly come may the more easily unite their tears with the mourners. They know the domestic history of each person, and immediately strike up an impromptu lamentation, in which they introduce the names of their relations who have recently died, touching some tender chord in every heart.” Thomson, p. 103, and see Jeremiah 16:5 . 17–22 . See summary introducing the section.

Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Consider ye, and call for {n} the skilful women, that they may come; and send for skilful women, that they may come: (n) Seeing you cannot lament your own sins, call for those foolish women, whom of a superstition you have to lament for the dead, that they by their feigned tears may provoke you to some sorrow.

(17) Mourning women . . . cunning women. —Eastern funerals were, and are, attended by mourners, chiefly women, hired for the purpose. Wailing was reduced to an art, and they who practised it were cunning. There are the “mourners” that “go about the streets” ( Ecclesiastes 12:5 ), those that “are skilful of lamentation” ( Amos 5:16 ), those that mourned for Jehoiakim ( Jeremiah 22:18 ), those that “wept and wailed greatly” in the house of Jairus ( Mark 5:38 ). They are summoned as to the funeral, not of a friend or neighbour, but of the nation.

The mourning women; a sort of persons, and principally women, as more apt for passions in this kind, which they had among them, 2 Chronicles 35:25 ; whose work it was, either to compose funeral elegies, or panegyrics in praise of the dead, and to act them in some mournful manner, as tearing their hair, and beating their breasts, with other mourning postures, or to sing them in some doleful tone, thereby artificially to provoke and excite both passions and expressions of grief in the friends of the deceased, rather wringing out tears than shedding them, in which probably they made greater seeming lamentations than those that did really mourn, as being most concerned; not that God calls upon them to do this as approving the formality, (though this foolish custom had obtained in most ages and countries,) any more than other customs that were made use of by way of illustration; as the Olympic games , and possibly that practice mentioned 1 Corinthians 15:29 ; but makes use of it, as being customary, either to excite them to and put them upon true repentance, or to convince them hereby that they were not able themselves sufficiently to bewail so great calamities as were coming upon them, intimating hereby that he would give them occasion for the most unfeigned weeping and lamentation. Cunning women; such as are most skilful in it, Amos 5:16 ; wisdom being taken for skill in any arts, as Exodus 31:3 , and elsewhere.