Jeremiah 9:17

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

Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Consider ye, and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for cunning women, that they may come: Mourning women - hired to heighten lamentation by

Consider ye; either in how sad a condition you are, what circumstances you are under; or rather, bethink yourselves what course to take: and therefore he puts them upon mourning and bewailing their condition, intimated by the following expression. The mourning women; a sort of persons, and principally women, as more apt for passions in this kind, which they had among them, ; 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 ; 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, ; wisdom being taken for skill in any arts, as , and elsewhere.

Jeremiah 9:17 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Consider ye, and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for cunning [women], that they may come:Ver. 17. Consider ye.] Intelligentes estote. Is not your hard heartedness such as that ye need such a help to do that wherein you should be forward and free hearted? The Hollanders and French fast, saith one, but, without exprobration be it spoken, they had need to send for mourning women, that by their cunning they may be taught to mourn. And call for the mourning women.] In planetum et omne pathos faciles, such as could make exquisite lamentation, and cunningly act the part of mourners at funerals, so as to wring tears from the beholders. These the Latins called Praeficas, quia luctui praeficiebantur, because they had the chief hand in funeral mournings; for the better carrying on whereof they both sang doleful ditties, and played on certain heavily sounding instruments, whence the poet - “ Cantabit maestis tibia funeribus. ” - Ovid. “ He will play with the pipe by a gloomy funeral.” Spec. Bel. Sac., 209. Ut flerent oculos erudiere suos. - Ovid.

(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.

Verse 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: - Οἱδ' επειεισαγαγονκλυταδωματα, τονμενεπειτα Τρητοιςενλεχεεσσιθεσαν, παραδ' εἱσαναοιδους, Θρηνωνεξαρχους, οἱτεστονοεσσαναοιδην Οἱμεναρ' εθρηνεον, επιδεστεναχοντογυναικες. 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."

17–22. See summary introducing the section.

17. Because they have forsaken my law — Thus far the challenge to attention: now follows the formal and fearful statement of the people’s sin and misery.