16 And I will send them wandering among the nations, among people strange to them and to their fathers: and I will send the sword after them till I have put an end to them.
A third of you will come to death from disease, wasting away among you through need of food; a third will be put to the sword round about you; and a third I will send away to every wind, letting loose a sword after them.
You are to have a third part burned with fire inside the town, when the days of the attack are ended; and a third part you are to take and give blows with the sword round about it; and give a third part for the wind to take away, and let loose a sword after them.
And I will send you out in all directions among the nations, and my sword will be uncovered against you, and your land will be without any living thing, and your towns will be made waste.
See, I am watching over them for evil and not for good: all the men of Judah who are in the land of Egypt will be wasted by the sword and by need of food till there is an end of them.
Then say, This is what the Lord has said: I will get you together from the peoples, and make you come out of the countries where you have been sent in flight, and I will give you the land of Israel.
James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, sends words of love to the twelve tribes of the Jews living in all parts of the earth.
Further, I gave my oath to them in the waste land that I would send them wandering among the nations, driving them out among the countries;
Or if I send a sword against that land, and say, Sword, go through the land, cutting off from it man and beast:
And the Lord will send you wandering among the peoples; only a small band of you will be kept from death among the nations where the Lord will send you.
And I will send on Elam four winds from the four quarters of heaven, driving them out to all those winds; there will be no nation into which the wanderers from Elam do not come. And I will let Elam be broken before their haters, and before those who are making designs against their lives: I will send evil on them, even my burning wrath, says the Lord; and I will send the sword after them till I have put an end to them:
And you are to say to them, This is what the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, has said: Take of this cup and be overcome, and let it come out again from your lips, and from your fall you will never be lifted up again, because of the sword which I will send among you.
And I will send the sword, and need of food, and disease, among them till they are all cut off from the land which I gave to them and to their fathers.
And it will be, when they say to you, Where are we to go? then you are to say to them, The Lord has said, Such as are for death, to death; and such as are for the sword, to the sword; and such as are to be in need of food, to need of food; and such as are to be taken away prisoners, to be taken away. And I will put over them four divisions, says the Lord: the sword causing death, dogs pulling the dead bodies about, and the birds of heaven, and the beasts of the earth to take their bodies for food and put an end to them. And I will make them a cause of fear to all the kingdoms of the earth, because of Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, and what he did in Jerusalem.
That their children might be mixed among the nations, and sent away into other lands.
Keep in mind, O Lord, the order you gave your servant Moses, saying, If you do wrong I will send you wandering among the peoples:
And you, and the king whom you have put over you, will the Lord take away to a nation strange to you and to your fathers; there you will be servants to other gods of wood and stone.
Worthy.Bible » Commentaries » Matthew Henry Commentary » Commentary on Jeremiah 9
Commentary on Jeremiah 9 Matthew Henry Commentary
Chapter 9
In this chapter the prophet goes on faithfully to reprove sin and to threaten God's judgments for it, and yet bitterly to lament both, as one that neither rejoiced at iniquity nor was glad at calamities.
Jer 9:1-11
The prophet, being commissioned both to foretel the destruction coming upon Judah and Jerusalem and to point out the sin for which that destruction was brought upon them, here, as elsewhere, speaks of both very feelingly: what he said of both came from the heart, and therefore one would have thought it would reach to the heart.
Jer 9:12-22
Two things the prophet designs, in these verses, with reference to the approaching destruction of Judah and Jerusalem:-
Jer 9:23-26
The prophet had been endeavouring to possess this people with a holy fear of God and his judgments, to convince them both of sin and wrath; but still they had recourse to some sorry subterfuge or other, under which to shelter themselves from the conviction and with which to excuse themselves in the obstinacy and carelessness. He therefore sets himself here to drive them from these refuges of lies and to show them the insufficiency of them.