Jeremiah 9:1 - Meaning and Application

The prophet had been given a double task, to warn Judah and Jerusalem of coming ruin and to show them the sin that brought it. He speaks about both with deep feeling. What he says comes from the heart, and you would think it should have reached the heart of the people.

He first gives himself over to grief because of his people’s miserable condition, which he laments in a very moving way. Jeremiah loved Jerusalem above his own joy, and her troubles hurt him more than his own sorrows. He cries out, “If only my head were full of water, and my eyes were a spring of tears,” so that he could weep all the time over the dead (Jeremiah 9:1). In Hebrew, the word for eye can also mean fountain, as if eyes were made more for weeping than for seeing in such a world of sorrow.

Jeremiah wept much, yet he wished he could weep more. He wanted his tears to move a stubborn people and wake them up to God’s judgment. While we live in this “valley of tears,” we should expect sorrow and learn to “sow in tears.” Those who mourn are blessed, for they will be comforted later. But while we are here, sorrow will often return again and again.

Jeremiah’s grief is public, not private. He would weep day and night, not mainly for his own family, but for the slain of the daughter of his people, the many countrymen who had fallen by the sword. When we hear of huge numbers killed in battles and sieges, we should be deeply moved and not treat it lightly. Even when they are not our own people, they still share our human nature, and many precious lives and souls are lost.

He also mourns the ruin of the land itself. He says he will weep and wail for the mountains, the hills, and the open pastures, which had once been fruitful and full of flocks and grain. Now the Chaldean army had burned them, as armies often do, destroying food and carrying off livestock. No one dares or even wants to travel through them, because everything looks bleak and frightening. The voice of cattle is gone, and even the birds and wild animals have fled, either from fear or because there is nothing left to eat.

God has many ways of turning a fertile land into barrenness because of the wickedness of its people. The destruction war brings to a country must move every tender heart, because war is like a tragedy that tears up the stage where it is played.

Jeremiah also gives himself over to loneliness because of the shameful conduct of his people. Though he lives in Judah, where God is known, he is tempted to cry out like the psalmist, “Woe to me that I live among the tents of Kedar” (Psalm 120:5). While others are running to the fortified cities, especially Jerusalem, he wishes he could retreat into the wilderness, away from his people’s sin (Jeremiah 9:2). He longs for a traveler’s lodging in an empty desert place, far from them.

This does not mean he really intended to leave his work. God had given him a task among them, and he must not quit it for his own comfort. We must not leave the world before our time, however bad it is. If he could not reform them, he could still testify against them. If he could not do good to many, he might still help some. But the words do show the temptation he felt to withdraw, and they warn that they may be deprived of his ministry.

Most of all, they show his holy anger at their evil, which kept going even after all his efforts to turn them back. Their sin made him weary of life, because they dishonored God and ruined themselves. There was a time when the place God chose for his name was the delight of good people. David longed to return to God’s house from the wilderness. But now Jeremiah, standing in God’s house when he says this, wishes he were in the wilderness instead.

Those make themselves very miserable who make God’s people and ministers tired of them and eager to get away. To explain why he wanted to leave, Jeremiah tells what he had observed among them. He would not leave because they were poor or in trouble, but because they were wicked. They were filthy, for many of them were adulterers, either practicing this sin or at least approving it. Sexual immorality makes people loathsome in God’s sight and in the sight of all good people.

They were also false. This is the sin Jeremiah especially stresses here. Those who had been unfaithful to God were also unfaithful to one another, and this was part of their punishment as well as their sin, because even cheaters hate being cheated. When you enter their public gatherings, whether for worship, justice, or business, you find an assembly of treacherous people. They are united in deceit, and they strengthen one another’s hands in doing what is false.

There they cheat with full intention and great effort, with a malicious plan, for they bend their tongues like a bow for lies, using a great deal of skill. Their tongues are trained for lying, just as a bent bow is ready for shooting, and they use them that way all the time. But they are not brave for the truth in the land. They should use the same skill and courage to defend what is true, but they refuse. They do not stand up for the truths of God that the prophets gave them. Even those who could not deny those truths were content to see them pushed aside.

In justice, they do not have the courage to support an honest cause when power and status are against it. Anyone who wants to be faithful to the truth must be brave for it. He must not be frightened by resistance or by the face of man. They are not brave for the truth in the land, the land that should have been known for truth and honor. Truth has fallen in the land, and they will not lift a hand to raise it up again (Isaiah 59:14, 15). One day we must answer, not only for opposing truth, but also for being too afraid to defend it.

Go into their families, and you will find that they cheat even their own brothers. Each brother utterly supplants the other, meaning they trip each other up if they can. They watch for ways to gain advantage over the very people they should trust. Jacob had a name that meant supplanter, and that word is used here. These people followed him in name, but not in true character, which should have been without deceit. They are so false that you cannot trust even a brother. You must guard yourself as carefully as if you were dealing with a stranger, a Canaanite, a merchant with dishonest scales in his hand. Things have come to a bad state when a man cannot trust his own brother.

Go into company and watch their dealings and their talk, and you will find no true sincerity or common honesty among them. The host and the guest are in danger from each other. The wisest advice is to be careful of every neighbor, even of a friend, or, as some read it, of the one who has shown you friendship and pretends to care for you. No one feels bound to be grateful or sincere. In conversation, every neighbor walks with slander. They do not care how false what they say may be. They follow the path of slander wherever it goes. They also go from house to house, carrying slanders with them, repeating every bad story they can gather or invent to stir up trouble. In trade and bargaining, they deceive each one his neighbor. They will say anything, even when they know it is false, if it helps themselves. They even lie for the sake of lying, just to keep in practice. They will not speak the truth, but will tell a planned lie and laugh after they have done it.

What makes the sin of this false and lying people even worse is that they are clever at sin. They have taught their tongue to speak lies, which shows that at first their natural conscience resisted it. Their tongue would have spoken truth, but they trained it to lie. Little by little, they became skilled in lying, and habit made it feel natural to them. They learned this when they were young, for the wicked are estranged from birth, speaking lies (Psalm 58:3). Now they have become experts at it.

They are also industrious in sin. They weary themselves to commit iniquity. They force their consciences into it and keep pressing against their convictions until they are worn down. They take great pains until they have almost spent themselves carrying out their malicious plans. They grow tired from sinful pursuits, yet they are not tired of sin itself. The service of sin is hard, men work themselves to exhaustion in it, and they labor hard to ruin their own souls.

They also go from bad to worse. They move from one sin to another, and from one level of sin to another. They started with smaller sins. No one becomes fully corrupt all at once. They began with half-truths and joking deceit, but at last they came to open lying. Now they are moving toward even greater sins, because they do not know me, says the Lord. When people have no true knowledge of God, or no thought of what they have known about him, what good can be expected from them? Their ignorance of God lies behind all their wrong behavior toward one another.

God had shown the prophet their wickedness, and he had also shown him what he was determined to do about it. He could tell the prophet, and he speaks with pity, what kind of people he was dealing with. I know your works and where you dwell (Revelation 2:13). So here, your home is in the midst of deceit, and everyone around you is devoted to it. Therefore, stay on your guard. If all men are liars, then we must beware of men and be wise as serpents. They are deceitful men, so there is little hope of doing much good among them, because no matter how plain things are made, they find some trick to slip away from conviction.

This charge is expanded further. Their tongue was a bent bow, planning and preparing harm. Here it is an arrow shot out, carrying out what they had planned. In some readings, it is like a killing arrow, because their tongue has been an instrument of death to many. They speak peace to their neighbors while lying in wait against them. Joab, King David’s army commander, kissed Abner when he was about to kill him, and Cain talked freely with his brother so no suspicion would fall on him. Fair words are empty when they are not joined to good intentions. When those words are used as a cover for evil plans, they are hateful.

While they were doing all this harm to one another, they were showing great contempt for God. They did not simply fail to know him, but, as Jeremiah 9:6 says, they refused to know him because of deceit and the lies of the false prophets. They had been tricked into thinking well of their own ways, and they loved the paths their own hearts chose. They did not want to learn God’s ways because that would have corrected their sins.

This is the ruin of sinners. They could be taught the true knowledge of the Lord, but they will not learn it. Where there is no knowledge of God, what good can be expected? (Hosea 4:1).

God had marked them for judgment, as Jeremiah 9:7, Jeremiah 9:9, and Jeremiah 9:11 show. Those who will not know God as their lawgiver will have to know him as their judge. Here God decides to bring his judgments, both to refine some and to destroy the rest.

Some will be refined, as Jeremiah 9:7 says. Because they are so corrupt, God says, “I will melt them and test them.” He will bring them into trouble and see what that trouble does. Will the furnace of suffering burn away their dross, their sinful waste? When they are melted down, will they be formed again into a better shape?

He will first try lighter troubles before bringing full destruction, because he does not desire the death of sinners. They will not be rejected as worthless silver until the refiner has melted them in vain (Jeremiah 6:29, Jeremiah 6:30). When God says, “How can I do because of the daughter of my people?” he speaks like someone weighing what is best. He is not eager to cast them off or hand them over to ruin until he has tried every likely means to lead them to repentance.

Or the meaning may be this: “How else can I deal with them? They have become so corrupt that the furnace is the only way left. What other course can I take?” (Isaiah 5:4, Isaiah 5:5). They are the daughter of my people, so I must do something to defend my own honor, which is dragged down if I ignore their wickedness. I must act to humble them and bring them back. A parent corrects his own children because they are his own. When God afflicts his people, he does it with a kind purpose, to soften and reform them. He only does this when it is needed and when he knows it is the best way.

The rest will be ruined, as Jeremiah 9:9 says. Fraud and lies are sins God hates, and he will call people to account for them. “Shall I not punish them for these things? Should my soul not take vengeance on such a nation as this,” a people so openly corrupt that they even seem to challenge God’s judgment? The sentence is set, and the decree has gone out in Jeremiah 9:11: “I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, a place fit only for jackals, and the cities of Judah a desolation.” God does this by giving the enemy permission and power to carry it out. But why is the holy city made into a heap? The answer is plain, because it has become unholy.