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 4:28
For this--on account of the desolations just described (Isa 5:30; Hos 4:3).
not repent-- (Num 23:19).
John Gill on Jeremiah 4:28
For this shall the earth mourn,.... That is, for the full end that will be made hereafter, though not now; the earth may be said to mourn when the inhabitants of it do; or when it is destroyed, and is become desolate, as the Targum, Jarchi, and Kimchi, explain it; when it is uncultivated and uninhabited:
and the heavens above be black; with thick clouds, and storms, and tempests; in allusion to mourners, that are clothed with black: these figures, of the earth's mourning, and the heavens being clothed in black, denote the horribleness of that dispensation, when there would be an utter destruction of the Jewish nation, church, and polity, of which Daniel prophesies, Daniel 9:27,
because I h…
Read the whole note in the consoleJohn Calvin on Jeremiah 4:28
Jeremiah 4:28
28. For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black: because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and will not repent, neither will I turn back from it.
28. Super hoc lugebit terra, et nigrescent (vel, caligine aut nigredine obducti erunt) coeli desursum (nescio tamen an posset verti, a transgressione; nam ml significat etiam transgredi et inquietare;) quia 1oquutus sum; cogitavi et non poenituit, et non convertar ab hoc.
Jeremiah proceeds here with the same subject, and still introduces God as the speaker, that what is said might produce a greater effect. For this, he says, the land shall mourn. The mourning of the land is to be taken for its desolation; but…
