Matthew Henry on Jeremiah 4:19–end
The prophet is here in an agony, and cries out like one upon the rack of pain with some acute distemper, or as a woman in travail. The expressions are very pathetic and moving, enough to melt a heart of stone into compassion: My bowels! my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; and yet well, and in health himself, and nothing ails him. Note, A good man, in such a bad world as this is, cannot but be a man of sorrows. My heart makes a noise in me, through the tumult of my spirits, and I cannot hold my peace. Note, The grievance and the grief sometimes may be such that the most prudent patient man cannot forbear complaining.
Now, what is the matter? What is it that puts the good man into such ag…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on Jeremiah 4:25
no man . . . birds--No vestige of the human, or of the feathered creation, is to be seen (Eze 38:20; Zep 1:3).
John Gill on Jeremiah 4:25
And I beheld, and, lo, there was no man,.... No people dwelling in it, as the Targum; the land was without inhabitants, they were either killed with the sword, or taken and carried captive into Babylon, or fled into Egypt and other countries:
and all the birds of the heavens were fled; at the sound of the trumpet, the alarm of war; at the blackness of the heavens, filled with smoke; at the barrenness of the earth, there being no seed sown; and the earth, as at the first creation, having no herb, nor trees bearing fruit, and so no food for birds; and therefore they went elsewhere, both wild and tame.
John Calvin on Jeremiah 4:23-26
Jeremiah 4:23-26
23. I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was without form, and void; and the heavens, and they had no light.
23. Vidi terram, et ecce vasta et deformis, et coelos, et nulla lux eorum:
24. I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and all the hills moved lightly.
24. Vidi montes, et ecce contremiscentes (contremiscebant), et omnes colles movebantur:
25. I beheld, and, lo, there was no man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled.
25. Vidi, et ecce nullus homo, et omnes aves coelorum evolaverant:
26. I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and by his fierce anger.
26. Vidi, et…
