Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJohn Trapp Complete Commentary - Jeremiah 9:17 - 9:17
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Jer_9:17 Thus saith the LORD of hosts, Consider ye, and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for cunning [women], that they may come:
Ver. 17. Consider ye.] Intelligentes estote. Is not your hard heartedness such as that ye need such a help to do that wherein you should be forward and free hearted? The Hollanders and French fast, saith one, {a} but, without exprobration be it spoken, they had need to send for mourning women, that by their cunning they may be taught to mourn.
And call for the mourning women.] In planetum et omne pathos faciles, {b} such as could make exquisite lamentation, and cunningly act the part of mourners at funerals, so as to wring tears from the beholders. These the Latins called Praeficas, quia luctui praeficiebantur, because they had the chief hand in funeral mournings; for the better carrying on whereof they both sang doleful ditties, {see 2Ch_35:25} and played on certain heavily sounding instruments, {Mat_9:23} whence the poet -
“ Cantabit maestis tibia funeribus. ” - Ovid.
“He will play with the pipe by a gloomy funeral.”
{a} Spec. Bel. Sac., 209.
{b} Ut flerent oculos erudiere suos. - Ovid.