Jer 9:22 | KingComments | STEP | The LORD calls for mourning ( ). Mourning women are called to come and wail. Judah is thereby likened to a death house. Death has also entered there in all its horrors, causing tremendous grief. More people need to come and help express their sorrow so that tears flow ( ). They want to unite with the mourning of Zion that mourns because she has been destroyed ( ). The occasion of the mourning is not the sin, but the consequences it must bear, such as the abandonment of the land and the overturning of their dwellings. When we mourn, we must not deceive ourselves and know the real reason for our sorrow. The women, along with the children, suffer the most from the effects of sin ( ). To them comes the word of the LORD and the call to listen to it. The suffering is so great – and therefore the need for mourning women – that they must tell the cause of the suffering to their daughters and girlfriends, so that they will also mourn. They must tell what has happened in their palaces, their well-timbered dwellings, and to their little children and their young men ( ). The LORD tells them to paint the results of sin in all their horror ( ). They are not to paint it more beautifully than it is. Nor is it so much the judgment of God as it is the results of their own actions. Death is presented here as a grim reaper who reaps ears from the field, binds them into sheaves and lays them on the ground. The corpses lie in the field like sheaves, and then not to be buried later, but as dung. All the horrors that have befallen humanity in world wars have left many millions dead and countless physically and mentally crippled. There have also been economic losses of astronomical proportions. What is the result? Does man learn from it? We see that the love of wealth and pleasure has only increased and that God has been pushed further than ever from society.

‏ Jeremiah 9:22

The General Dirge

The LORD calls for mourning (Jer 9:17). Mourning women are called to come and wail. Judah is thereby likened to a death house. Death has also entered there in all its horrors, causing tremendous grief. More people need to come and help express their sorrow so that tears flow (Jer 9:18). They want to unite with the mourning of Zion that mourns because she has been destroyed (Jer 9:19). The occasion of the mourning is not the sin, but the consequences it must bear, such as the abandonment of the land and the overturning of their dwellings. When we mourn, we must not deceive ourselves and know the real reason for our sorrow.

The women, along with the children, suffer the most from the effects of sin (Jer 9:20). To them comes the word of the LORD and the call to listen to it. The suffering is so great – and therefore the need for mourning women – that they must tell the cause of the suffering to their daughters and girlfriends, so that they will also mourn. They must tell what has happened in their palaces, their well-timbered dwellings, and to their little children and their young men (Jer 9:21).

The LORD tells them to paint the results of sin in all their horror (Jer 9:22). They are not to paint it more beautifully than it is. Nor is it so much the judgment of God as it is the results of their own actions. Death is presented here as a grim reaper who reaps ears from the field, binds them into sheaves and lays them on the ground. The corpses lie in the field like sheaves, and then not to be buried later, but as dung.

All the horrors that have befallen humanity in world wars have left many millions dead and countless physically and mentally crippled. There have also been economic losses of astronomical proportions. What is the result? Does man learn from it? We see that the love of wealth and pleasure has only increased and that God has been pushed further than ever from society.