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Jeremiah 9:19

For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion, ‘How we are ruined! We are greatly confounded because we have forsaken the land, because they have cast down our dwellings.’ ”

World English Bible · Public Domain

Parallel Translations

  • WEB World English Bible

    For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion, ‘How we are ruined! We are greatly confounded because we have forsaken the land, because they have cast down our dwellings.’ ”

  • KJV King James Version

    For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion, How are we spoiled! we are greatly confounded, because we have forsaken the land, because our dwellings have cast us out.

  • JPS JPS Tanakh (1917)

    (9-18) For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion: 'How are we undone! We are greatly confounded, because we have forsaken the land, because our dwellings have cast us out.'

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Cross-references (14)

Passages linked to Jeremiah 9:19 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.

  • Jeremiah 4:13 Behold, he will come up as clouds, and his chariots will be as the whirlwind. His horses are swifter than eagles. Woe to us! For we are ruined.
  • Deuteronomy 28:29 You will grope at noonday, as the blind gropes in darkness, and you shall not prosper in your ways. You will only be oppressed and robbed always, and there will be no one to save you.
  • Ezekiel 7:16-18 But those of those who escape, they will escape and will be on the mountains like doves of the valleys, all of them moaning, everyone in his iniquity. All hands will be feeble, and all knees will be weak as water. They will also clothe themselves with sackcloth, and horror will cover them. Shame will be on all faces, and baldness on all their heads.
  • Leviticus 18:25 The land was defiled. Therefore I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out her inhabitants.
  • Leviticus 18:28 that the land not vomit you out also, when you defile it, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.
  • Leviticus 20:22 “ ‘You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my ordinances, and do them, that the land where I am bringing you to dwell may not vomit you out.
  • Jeremiah 2:14 Is Israel a slave? Is he born into slavery? Why has he become a captive?
  • Jeremiah 4:20 Destruction on destruction is decreed, for the whole land is laid waste. Suddenly my tents are destroyed, and my curtains gone in a moment.
  • Jeremiah 4:30-31 You, when you are made desolate, what will you do? Though you clothe yourself with scarlet, though you deck yourself with ornaments of gold, though you enlarge your eyes with makeup, you make yourself beautiful in vain. Your lovers despise you. They seek your life. For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail, the anguish as of her who gives birth to her first child, the voice of the daughter of Zion, who gasps for breath, who spreads her hands, saying, “Woe is me now! For my soul faints before the murderers.”
  • Lamentations 4:15 “Go away!” they cried to them. “Unclean! Go away! Go away! Don’t touch! When they fled away and wandered, men said among the nations, “They can’t live here any more.”
  • Lamentations 5:2 Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our houses to aliens.
  • Micah 1:8-9 For this I will lament and wail; I will go stripped and naked; I will howl like the jackals, and moan like the daughters of owls. For her wounds are incurable; for it has come even to Judah. It reaches to the gate of my people, even to Jerusalem.
  • Micah 2:4 In that day they will take up a parable against you, and lament with a doleful lamentation, saying, ‘We are utterly ruined! My people’s possession is divided up. Indeed he takes it from me and assigns our fields to traitors!’ ”
  • Micah 2:10 Arise, and depart! For this is not your resting place, because of uncleanness that destroys, even with a grievous destruction.

Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)

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Explain this verse (10 sources)

Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.

John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain We have said before, that when Jeremiah addressed the…

We have said before, that when Jeremiah addressed the people in these words, they were still in a tolerably good condition, so that the king had confidence in his own resources; and his counsellors also thought that some aid would come to them from Egypt, and the people were likewise deceived. But the Prophet speaks of future events and points out as by the finger the evils which were as yet concealed from the view; for he could not otherwise teach with any authority, as he had to do with men of iron hearts. As then he saw that his teaching had no effect, and was wholly disregarded by men so slothful, he felt it necessary to form his style so as to touch their feelings.

On this account he says, that a voice was heard, a voice of wailing from Sion; where yet all exulted with joy. Then he adds, How have we been destroyed! and made greatly ashamed! The Jews thought this a fable, until they found by experience that they had been extremely hard and obstinate: but this really happened. Though they were then indulging in their pleasures, he yet proclaims lamentations to them, as though they were already destroyed: A voice, he says, has been heard, as though the Jews were bewailing the calamity, respecting which they thought the Prophet was fabling, for no danger was yet apparent.

Read full note →

But in order, as I have said, to condemn the hardness of their hearts, he represents them in another character, as bewailing their ruinous condition, and saying, We have left the land; in which however they thought their dwelling would be perpetual; for they boasted that they could never be excluded, as it had been declared,

“This is my rest for ever, here will I dwell, for I have chosen it.” (Psalm 132:14.)

As then God had testified that it would be a quiet habitation to his people, they thought that they were fortified by a triple wall and rampart, and that the city was altogether unassailable. But Jeremiah represents them as saying, that they had left their own land, that is, that they had been drawn and driven into exile. Then he adds, because they have cast us out This seems to refer to their enemies who had cast them out, that is, pulled down their dwellings. Some take dwellings to be the nominative case to the verb, “Our dwellings have cast us out.” But the first meaning reads better: I therefore consider the sense to be simply this, — that they were cast out and that their houses were destroyed by their enemies. 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.

Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain As though they were weary of us, because of…
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain Jer 9:19 For a voice of wailing is heard…
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Is heard out of Zion, i.e. Jerusalem, spoken in…
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain For a voice of wailing is heard out of…
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain The cry of "the mourning women."
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 19. Co. considers that the v. is a gloss…
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (19) We have forsaken.—Better, we have left. The English…
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Forsaken; rather, left. Our dwellings have cast us out;…
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 General Information:

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