For this the earth will mourn, and the heavens above be black, because I have spoken it. I have planned it, and I have not repented, neither will I turn back from it.”
Parallel Translations
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For this the earth will mourn, and the heavens above be black, because I have spoken it. I have planned it, and I have not repented, neither will I turn back from it.”
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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.
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For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black; because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, and I have not repented, neither will I turn back from it.
Cross-references (31)
Passages linked to Jeremiah 4:28 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Numbers 23:19 God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should repent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not make it good?
- Isaiah 50:3 I clothe the heavens with blackness. I make sackcloth their covering.”
- Jeremiah 12:4 How long will the land mourn, and the herbs of the whole country wither? Because of the wickedness of those who dwell therein, the animals and birds are consumed; because they said, “He won’t see our latter end.”
- Hosea 4:3 Therefore the land will mourn, and everyone who dwells in it will waste away, with all living things in her, even the animals of the field and the birds of the sky, yes, the fish of the sea also die.
- Isaiah 5:30 They will roar against them in that day like the roaring of the sea. If one looks to the land, behold, darkness and distress. The light is darkened in its clouds.
- Joel 2:30-31 I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth: blood, fire, and pillars of smoke. The sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and terrible day of Yahweh comes.
- 1 Samuel 15:29 Also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent; for he is not a man, that he should repent.”
- Isaiah 14:24-27 Yahweh of Armies has sworn, saying, “Surely, as I have thought, so shall it happen; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand: that I will break the Assyrian in my land, and tread him under foot on my mountains. Then his yoke will leave them, and his burden leave their shoulders. This is the plan that is determined for the whole earth. This is the hand that is stretched out over all the nations. For Yahweh of Armies has planned, and who can stop it? His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?”
- Isaiah 24:4 The earth mourns and fades away. The world languishes and fades away. The lofty people of the earth languish.
- Isaiah 33:8-9 The highways are desolate. The traveling man ceases. The covenant is broken. He has despised the cities. He doesn’t respect man. The land mourns and languishes. Lebanon is confounded and withers away. Sharon is like a desert, and Bashan and Carmel are stripped bare.
- Isaiah 34:4 All of the army of the sky will be dissolved. The sky will be rolled up like a scroll, and all its armies will fade away, as a leaf fades from off a vine or a fig tree.
- Isaiah 46:10-11 I declare the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done. I say: My counsel will stand, and I will do all that I please. I call a ravenous bird from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country. Yes, I have spoken. I will also bring it to pass. I have planned. I will also do it.
- Jeremiah 4:23-26 I saw the earth, and, behold, it was waste and void, and the heavens, and they had no light. I saw the mountains, and behold, they trembled, and all the hills moved back and forth. I saw, and behold, there was no man, and all the birds of the sky had fled. I saw, and behold, the fruitful field was a wilderness, and all its cities were broken down at the presence of Yahweh, before his fierce anger.
- Jeremiah 7:16 “Therefore don’t pray for this people. Don’t lift up a cry or prayer for them or make intercession to me; for I will not hear you.
- Jeremiah 12:11 They have made it a desolation. It mourns to me, being desolate. The whole land is made desolate, because no one cares.
- Jeremiah 14:2 “Judah mourns, and its gates languish. They sit in black on the ground. The cry of Jerusalem goes up.
- Jeremiah 14:11-12 Yahweh said to me, “Don’t pray for this people for their good. When they fast, I will not hear their cry; and when they offer burnt offering and meal offering, I will not accept them; but I will consume them by the sword, by famine, and by pestilence.”
- Jeremiah 15:1-9 Then Yahweh said to me, “Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind would not turn toward this people. Cast them out of my sight, and let them go out! It will happen, when they ask you, ‘Where shall we go out?’ then you shall tell them, ‘Yahweh says: “Such as are for death, to death; such as are for the sword, to the sword; such as are for the famine, to the famine; and such as are for captivity, to captivity.” ’ “I will appoint over them four kinds,” says Yahweh: “the sword to kill, the dogs to tear, the birds of the sky, and the animals of the earth, to devour and to destroy. I will cause them to be tossed back and forth among all the kingdoms of the earth, because of Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, for that which he did in Jerusalem. For who will have pity on you, Jerusalem? Who will mourn you? Who will come to ask of your welfare? You have rejected me,” says Yahweh. “You have gone backward. Therefore I have stretched out my hand against you and destroyed you. I am weary of showing compassion. I have winnowed them with a fan in the gates of the land. I have bereaved them of children. I have destroyed my people. They didn’t return from their ways. Their widows are increased more than the sand of the seas. I have brought on them against the mother of the young men a destroyer at noonday. I have caused anguish and terrors to fall on her suddenly. She who has borne seven languishes. She has given up the spirit. Her sun has gone down while it was yet day. She has been disappointed and confounded. I will deliver their residue to the sword before their enemies,” says Yahweh.
- Jeremiah 23:10 For the land is full of adulterers; for because of the curse the land mourns. The pastures of the wilderness have dried up. Their course is evil, and their might is not right;
- Jeremiah 23:20 Yahweh’s anger will not return until he has executed, and until he has performed the intents of his heart. In the latter days, you will understand it perfectly.
- Jeremiah 30:24 The fierce anger of Yahweh will not return until he has accomplished, and until he has performed the intentions of his heart. In the latter days you will understand it.”
- Ezekiel 24:14 I, Yahweh, have spoken it. It will happen, and I will do it. I won’t go back. I won’t spare. I won’t repent. According to your ways, and according to your doings, they will judge you,” says the Lord Yahweh.’ ”
- Hosea 13:14 I will ransom them from the power of Sheol. I will redeem them from death! Death, where are your plagues? Sheol, where is your destruction? “Compassion will be hidden from my eyes.
- Joel 1:10 The field is laid waste. The land mourns, for the grain is destroyed, The new wine has dried up, and the oil languishes.
- Matthew 27:45 Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour.
- Mark 15:33 When the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.
- Luke 23:44 It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour.
- Ephesians 1:9 making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him
- Ephesians 1:11 We were also assigned an inheritance in him, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who does all things after the counsel of his will,
- Hebrews 7:21 (for they indeed have been made priests without an oath), but he with an oath by him that says of him, “The Lord swore and will not change his mind, ‘You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.’ ”
- Revelation 6:12 I saw when he opened the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake. The sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became as blood.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (15 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain Jeremiah proceeds here with the same subject, and still…
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 he refers to what he had said before. He does not speak of the inhabitants of the land; for they who thus explain the passage, diminish much the force of the expression; for the Prophet here ascribes terror and sorrow to the very elements, which is much more striking than if he said, that all men would be in sorrow and grief. The same also must be thought of the heavens. Indeed, the latter clause proves that he does not speak of the inhabitants, but of the land itself, which, though without reason, seems yet to dread God’s vengeance. And thus the Prophet upbraids men with their insensibility; for when God appeared as judge from heaven, they were not touched with any fear. Mourn then shall the land, and covered shall be the heaven with darkness; that is, though men remain stupid, yet both heaven and earth shall feel how dreadful God’s judgment will be.
He afterwards adds, Because I have spoken. Some consider אשר, asher, what, to be understood between this sentence and the following verb: “Because I have spoken what I have purposed, and I have not repented.” But the concise phrase is not unsuitable: God first intimates, that he had pronounced the sentence, which would remain firm and unchangeable; as though he had said, “I have once for all declared by my servants what I will do.” For the prophets, we know, were the heralds of God’s vengeance: and as their doctrine was often despised, so at this day also the world obstinately rejects it; and as it often now derides all threatenings, so it happened then. But Jeremiah introduces here God as the speaker, as though he had said, “My servants have been despised by you; but they have said nothing but what I have commanded them: I am therefore the author of that sentence by which you ought to have been moved and roused.” In this sense it is that God testifies that he had spoken; for he transfers to himself what the Jews thought proceeded from the prophets, and hence supposed that they were at liberty to regard as nothing what the prophets pronounced against them: “I myself am He,” says God, “who has spoken.” So that we must understand a contrast here between God and the prophets; as though he had said, that the Jews in vain slumbered in their sins, because they thought they had to do only with mortals, since God himself had commanded his servants to denounce the ruin that was despised.
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But that they might not think that God had thus spoken to cause a false alarm, (for hypocrites flatter themselves with this pretense, that God does not speak seriously, but that he frightens them with bugbears, as children are wont to be,) he says, that he had purposed. He had said before that he had spoken, that is, by his prophets; but what he means now by this word is, that the predictions which he had made known as to their destruction proceeded from his own secret counsel: “This,” he says, “has been decreed by me.”
He then adds, It has not repented me, and I will not turn from it. He briefly shews, that the Jews were now given up to death, that they might not think that God could be pacified as long as they followed their vices; for God had decreed to destroy them; and he had not only declared this by his prophets, but had also resolved within himself to do so. By the term repent, is to be understood a change; for God cannot, strictly speaking, repent, as nothing is hid from him; but he speaks, as I have lately stated, after a human manner: and every ambiguity is removed by the next phrase, when he says, I will not turn from it, that is, “I will not retract my sentence.” It follows —
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Jer 4:28 For this shall the earth mourn, and…
Jer 4:28 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.
Ver. 28. Because I have spoken it, &c.] Quod scrips; scrips, said Pilate, I will not alter it. See the like, Eze 24:13-14.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens…
For this shall the earth mourn, and the heavens above be black; expressions to set forth the dreadfulness of the judgment; he makes the elements to personate mourners, a sad face of things above and below, a metaphor, and therein to shame the stupidity of his people.
Because I have spoken it: q.d. You would not believe either that my prophets spake, or what they said; now I tell you I speak myself, and what I have resolved upon I will not revoke; see Eze 24:13,14, and Jer 15:6; for I have purposed it; I have not spoken in my heat or fury, but upon mature deliberation; an anthropopathy; or, what the prophets have denounced I will ratify.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain For this shall the earth mourn,.... That is, for…
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, Dan 9:27,
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because I have spoken it; in my word, as the Targum; in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, by Moses and the prophets:
I have purposed it; or I have thought of it, in my counsel, as the Targum; it was a thing deliberately devised and determined, and therefore can never be frustrated, or made void:
and will not repent; of what was purposed and predicted:
neither will I turn back from it; revoke, or retract it; it shall surely come to pass: the Jews, upon their return from the Babylonish captivity, and afterwards, might flatter themselves that a full end would not be made of them, because it was not then done; and therefore these several strong expressions are used, to confirm and assure them of it; for the word of God cannot fail, his counsel shall stand; he is not a man, that he should lie or repent; he will do all his pleasure.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Mourn - Expressions to set forth the dreadfulness of…
Mourn - Expressions to set forth the dreadfulness of the judgment; he makes the elements to personate mourners.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain Jer 4:28-29. For this shall the earth mourn, &c.…
Jer 4:28-29. For this shall the earth mourn, &c. — More expressions to set forth the dreadfulness of the judgment: he makes the elements to personate mourners. And the heavens above be black — Under sad calamities every thing looks dismal; even the heavens themselves do not seem to shine with their usual brightness. Because I have spoken it, I have purposed it, &c. — Blaney, following the LXX., changes a little the order of the words, and reads, “I have spoken, and do not repent: I have purposed, and will not recede from it.” God’s purpose of delivering up the Jews into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar was irreversible, because he foresaw that the greatest part of them would continue impenitent, and that it would be expedient and necessary, in order to their being humbled and brought to repentance, that they should be carried into captivity. Otherwise the removal of judgments, either those inflicted or threatened to be inflicted, is promised upon repentance, to which God frequently exhorted these Jews by his prophets. The whole city shall flee — The inhabitants of all ranks and qualities shall seek to escape the fury of the Chaldean army, chap. Jer 39:4. They shall go into thickets — Either upon the report of the coming of their enemies, the prophet hereby, as it were, deriding their confidence, or rather at the approach of their vast armies: for they were closely besieged before they fled, as appears 2Ki 25:4. Such a consternation there shall be upon them, that they shall run into every hole to hide themselves; thus Manasseh was taken among the thorns, 2Ch 33:11. The Hebrew is, באו בעבים, they shall go into the clouds; meaning, probably, dark places on the tops of hills, reaching, as it were, to the clouds, or among the cloudy shades of trees and groves that usually grew there. The LXX. render it, εισεδυσαν εις τα σπηλαια, they entered into the caves; adding, και εις τα αλση εκρυβησαν, they were hid in the groves. And climbed up upon the rocks — Namely, to save their lives. Every city shall be forsaken — There shall be an utter desolation, their cities being quite deserted, and none left to inhabit them.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain For ... - Because of this doom upon Judah.
For ... - Because of this doom upon Judah.
I have purposed it - The Septuagint arrangement restores the parallelism:
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For I have spoken, and will not repent,
I have purposed, and will not turn back from it.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Repented. Only a finite being can do this. God’s…
Repented. Only a finite being can do this. God’s resolution is here unconditional and fixed.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain For this--on account of the desolations just described (Isa…
For this--on account of the desolations just described (Isa 5:30; Hos 4:3).
not repent-- (Num 23:19).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 28, 29. For this, etc. — But once more…
28, 29. For this, etc. — But once more does the prophet return to the sad story. In language more simple and intelligible he sets forth the coming desolation. The city shall be forsaken, and the people shall take refuge in the thickets and clefts of the rocks.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 28. be black] be in mourning from sympathy. The…
28. be black] be in mourning from sympathy. The following clauses should read I have spoken it and have not repented; I have purposed it, and will not turn back from it. So LXX. The verbs in the Hebrew were accidentally disarranged.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (28) For this shall the earth mourn . .…
(28) For this shall the earth mourn . . .—As with all true poets, the face of nature seems to the prophet to sympathise with human suffering. (Comp. Amo_8:9; Mat_24:29.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain For this; i.e. because of the impending judgment. Be…
For this; i.e. because of the impending judgment. Be black. "To be black" is equivalent to "to put on mourning". (comp. Jer_8:21 Jer_14:2)
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain repent (See Scofield "Zec 8:14").
Marg
repent (See Scofield "Zec 8:14").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 4:28 At funerals in Hebrew society, it was customary…
4:28 At funerals in Hebrew society, it was customary for people to mourn and be draped in black (cp. Isa 5:30; 50:3). The Lord had determined the people’s guilt, and he promised to be true to his word (Jer 5:10; 30:11, 24; Isa 5:30; 46:10-11).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.