Jeremiah 9
No book of the Bible lets us feel its author's heart the way Jeremiah does, and chapter 9 opens at its rawest. Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people (v. 1). This is not a figure of speech tossed off lightly. The prophet wishes his entire body could be converted into water so that he could weep ceaselessly over a people marked for ruin. He has carried God's word to them for years; he has watched them refuse it; and now he grieves with something close to God's own grief.3
What he grieves over, the chapter spells out without flinching. The people's defining sin is deceit. They bend their tongues like their bow for lies… they have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity (vv. 3, 5). One speaks peaceably to a neighbour's face while laying an ambush in the heart. In such a place trust collapses - trust ye not in any brother (v. 4) - and underneath every lie lies the root problem the LORD names twice: they know not me; through deceit they refuse to know me (vv. 3, 6). Judgment follows, the mourning women are called to raise their wail, and death itself comes climbing in at the windows.
And then, set against all that pride and ruin, the chapter gives its great word - one the New Testament will reach for more than once. Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth (vv. 23-24). Every prize the world chases - brains, strength, wealth - is set on the scale and found wanting against one thing: knowing God. The chapter closes on a warning that the outward marks of belonging mean nothing without the inward reality, for the LORD will deal with all who are uncircumcised in the heart (v. 26).2
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
Jeremiah 9:1-11Oh That My Head Were Waters
1Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! 2Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! for they be all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men. 3And they bend their tongues like their bow for lies: but they are not valiant for the truth upon the earth; for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the LORD. 4Take ye heed every one of his neighbour, and trust ye not in any brother: for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbour will walk with slanders. 5And they will deceive every one his neighbour, and will not speak the truth: they have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity. 6Thine habitation is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know me, saith the LORD.
The chapter opens with a wish so extravagant it can only come from a heart that is breaking: Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people (v. 1). Jeremiah does not merely say he is sad. He wishes his whole head could be turned into water, his eyes into an unfailing spring, so that he could weep without stopping, day and night, for those who are dying. This is grief past the point where ordinary tears are enough. And it is grief for others - for the slain of the daughter of my people, the very nation that has rejected the word he carries. Jeremiah has every human reason to be done with them; the next verse shows he even longs to leave: Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place… that I might leave my people, and go from them (v. 2). He is pulled in two directions at once - revolted by their treachery, and yet weeping over their ruin. That double pull is the mark of a true prophet. He feels what God feels: anger at the sin and sorrow over the sinner, held together in one aching heart.
The reason for the grief is named at once, and it is not violence or idolatry first of all but something quieter and more corrosive: deceit. They bend their tongues like their bow for lies… they have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity (vv. 3, 5). The image is exact and chilling. A bow is not bent by accident; it is drawn deliberately, aimed, and loosed to wound. So these people aim their words. Lying is not a slip they fall into but a weapon they have trained themselves to wield - they have taught their tongue. And it has cost them effort: they weary themselves to commit iniquity, working harder at deception than an honest person works at the truth. The result is a society where the most basic bonds dissolve. Take ye heed every one of his neighbour, and trust ye not in any brother (v. 4). When everyone is lying, no one can be believed, and the web that holds a community together - the simple assumption that a person's word can be trusted - comes apart thread by thread. The prophet is describing not just private sins but the unraveling of a whole people.
Twice in these verses the LORD reaches past the symptoms to the disease, and both times He names the same thing: they know not me, saith the LORD (v. 3); through deceit they refuse to know me, saith the LORD (v. 6). Underneath the lying tongues and the broken trust is a severed relationship. The people have cut themselves off from the knowledge of God - and notice the second line carefully, for it shows this is not mere ignorance but refusal. Through deceit they refuse to know me. Their lying is not only a sin against one another; it is the very means by which they hold God at arm's length. A life built on falsehood cannot bear the presence of the One who is true, so deceit becomes a way of not having to know Him. This is the chapter's deepest diagnosis, and it will set up its great remedy at the end. The problem is a failure to know God; the one boast worth having, verse 24 will say, is precisely that a person understandeth and knoweth Him. Everything in between - the weeping, the verdict, the wailing women - hangs on this single broken thread, and on its mending.
7Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, Behold, I will melt them, and try them; for how shall I do for the daughter of my people? 8Their tongue is as an arrow shot out; it speaketh deceit: one speaketh peaceably to his neighbour with his mouth, but in heart he layeth his wait. 9Shall I not visit them for these things? saith the LORD: shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this? 10For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing, and for the habitations of the wilderness a lamentation, because they are burned up, so that none can pass through them; neither can men hear the voice of the cattle; both the fowl of the heavens and the beast are fled; they are gone. 11And I will make Jerusalem heaps, and a den of dragons; and I will make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant.
God's response to the deceit is announced with two startling notes held together. First comes the language of refining: Behold, I will melt them, and try them (v. 7). The image is the metalworker's furnace, where ore is heated until the dross separates out. There is judgment here, but it is not bare destruction; melting and trying is what one does to purify, to recover something worth keeping. Yet the verse cannot finish without an ache: for how shall I do for the daughter of my people? Even in pronouncing the verdict, God grieves the way Jeremiah grieved in verse 1. The arrow-tongue is described once more - one speaketh peaceably to his neighbour with his mouth, but in heart he layeth his wait (v. 8) - and the rhetorical questions of verse 9 (Shall I not visit them for these things?) make plain that such sustained treachery cannot simply be ignored by a God who is just. Then the sorrow widens until it takes in the land itself: For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing (v. 10). The pastures are burned, the cattle gone, the birds fled, until Jerusalem is left as heaps and the cities of Judah stand empty (v. 11). It is a portrait of a world emptied out - the cost, finally, of a people who would not know their God.
Jeremiah 9:12-22Call for the Mourning Women
12Who is the wise man, that may understand this? and who is he to whom the mouth of the LORD hath spoken, that he may declare it, for what the land perisheth and is burned up like a wilderness, that none passeth through? 13And the LORD saith, Because they have forsaken my law which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice, neither walked therein; 14But have walked after the imagination of their own heart, and after Baalim, which their fathers taught them: 15Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink. 16I will scatter them also among the heathen, whom neither they nor their fathers have known: and I will send a sword after them, till I have consumed them.
A question is set before the reader: Who is the wise man, that may understand this? (v. 12). Why has the land been ruined and burned until no one can cross it? The world might reach for political or military answers - bad alliances, stronger armies. But the truly wise person, the one to whom the mouth of the LORD hath spoken, is given the real reason, and it is moral and relational, not strategic: Because they have forsaken my law which I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice… But have walked after the imagination of their own heart, and after Baalim (vv. 13-14). The wreckage traces back to two movements of the heart, named in order. First a turning away - they forsook the law God set plainly before them and would not listen. Then a turning toward - toward the imagination of their own heart and toward the Baals, the fertility gods of the surrounding nations. It is worth noticing what comes first: not the idols, but the abandonment of God's word and the preference for their own thinking. Idolatry was the destination, but self-will was the road. The note that they followed gods which their fathers taught them shows how a wrong turn, once taken, hardens into inheritance, handed down until it feels like simply the way things are.
The sentence on such a people is described in tastes and scatterings. Behold, I will feed them… with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink (v. 15). Wormwood is a plant of proverbial bitterness; gall is bitter and poisonous. The point is that a people who have fed on the bitter fruit of their own choices will now taste fully what those choices yield. Sin is not arbitrary, and neither is its harvest; what they sowed in falsehood and idolatry they will now drink to the dregs. And the second stroke matches the first: I will scatter them also among the heathen… and I will send a sword after them (v. 16). The covenant people who refused to live in the land as God's people will be dispersed among nations they never knew. There is a terrible fittingness to it. They would not know the LORD who was near to them; now they are scattered among strangers they do not know either. Exile is, in part, the outward shape of an inward estrangement that came first. The sword follows them not because God delights in it - the chapter has already shown Him grieving - but because a holy God will not finally call evil good.
17Thus 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: 18And let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters. 19For 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. 20Yet hear the word of the LORD, O ye women, and let your ear receive the word of his mouth, and teach your daughters wailing, and every one her neighbour lamentation. 21For death is come up into our windows, and is entered into our palaces, to cut off the children from without, and the young men from the streets. 22Speak, Thus saith the LORD, Even the carcases of men shall fall as dung upon the open field, and as the handful after the harvestman, and none shall gather them.
Now the chapter does something striking: it calls for professional grief. Call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for cunning women (v. 17). In the ancient world skilled mourners were summoned to lead a community's lament, to give shape and voice to sorrow too large to bear in silence. The coming disaster is so vast that ordinary tears will not suffice; experts in weeping must be brought in, and even their daughters trained in it: teach your daughters wailing, and every one her neighbour lamentation (v. 20). Grief is to be passed down like a craft, because there will be so much of it. And notice the words the mourners are given: that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters (v. 18). It is the very longing Jeremiah voiced for himself in verse 1 - eyes turned to fountains - now spread across the whole people. Then comes the most haunting image of all: death is come up into our windows, and is entered into our palaces, to cut off the children from without, and the young men from the streets (v. 21). Death is pictured as a thief climbing in where no door was left open, reaching the young in the streets and the children at play. The section ends in a field of the unburied (v. 22) - the final indignity, bodies left like cut grain that no one gathers. The chapter refuses to make the cost of sin abstract. It makes us look.
Jeremiah 9:23-26Let Him That Glorieth Glory in This
23Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: 24But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD. 25Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will punish all them which are circumcised with the uncircumcised; 26Egypt, and Judah, and Edom, and the children of Ammon, and Moab, and all that are in the utmost corners, that dwell in the wilderness: for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart.
After all the grief and ruin, the chapter lifts to its great word, and the contrast is total. Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches (v. 23). Three things are named, and they are precisely the three a human being is most tempted to build a life on: intelligence, strength, and wealth. They are not evil in themselves - wisdom, ability, and resources are gifts. The danger is in the word glory: to make them the ground of one's worth and confidence, the thing one finally leans on and boasts in. Set against the people just described - who trusted their own cleverness, who thought themselves secure - the warning lands hard. And then comes the one exception, the single boast that is permitted: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me (v. 24). Not knowing about God - the verb is the warm, relational word for genuinely knowing a person. The one thing in all the world worth boasting in is that you truly know God. Everything in verse 23 can be lost in a day - the mind dims, the strength fails, the riches vanish. This one possession cannot be taken. It is the exact remedy for the disease the chapter named at the start: the people who refuse to know me (v. 6) are answered by the call to know me as the only boast that lasts.
The verse does not leave the knowledge of God vague; it tells us exactly which God is worth knowing and boasting in. That I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight (v. 24). Three qualities are named, and they are the very heart of God's character. Lovingkindness is His steadfast, covenant-keeping love - the loyal mercy that does not let go. Judgment is justice rightly done, the setting of things right. Righteousness is His unfailing rectitude, His being and doing what is good. Hold the three together and a balance emerges that the whole chapter has been pressing toward: this is a God of mercy who is also a God of justice, whose love never cancels His righteousness and whose righteousness is never cold of love. And the clause at the end is the warmest touch of all: for in these things I delight. God does not merely permit lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness; He delights in them. They are what He loves to do in the earth. To know this God - to understand that the One behind all things is just like this - is the knowledge that reorders a life. It is why such knowledge, and not wisdom or might or wealth, is the only thing worth boasting in.
The chapter ends on a sober coda about belonging and reality. Behold, the days come… that I will punish all them which are circumcised with the uncircumcised (v. 25), and the list that follows sets Judah among the surrounding nations - Egypt, Edom, Ammon, Moab. Then the sting: for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in the heart (v. 26). Circumcision was the outward sign that marked Israel as God's covenant people, the badge of belonging. But here the LORD says the badge counts for nothing where the inner reality is missing. To be uncircumcised in the heart is to bear the outward mark while the heart itself remains untouched, unyielded, unchanged - closed in exactly the way verse 6 described, refusing to know God. The point is searching and timeless. Outward markers of belonging - the right family, the right rituals, the right words - cannot stand in for the thing they are meant to signify. What God looks for is a heart actually turned toward Him. This is the same truth the chapter named as the one boast worth having: not the external sign, but to understandeth and knoweth me (v. 24). A mark on the body is no substitute for a heart that knows God.
Further study
- The Hebrew text of Jeremiah 9 with Rashi, Radak, and other classical commentators side by side - useful for the verb halal (vv. 23-24, “glory” / “boast”), for chesed (v. 24, “lovingkindness”), and for the imagery of the tongue bent like a bow for lies (v. 3).
- Jeremiah 9 ↔ 1 Corinthians 1 · 2 Corinthians 10 · Luke 19Intertextual BibleTraces the threads tying Jeremiah 9 to the rest of Scripture - the one true boast of verses 23-24 quoted in He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord (1 Cor. 1:31; 2 Cor. 10:17), and the weeping prophet of verse 1 read alongside the One who beheld the city, and wept over it (Luke 19:41).
- Jeremiah 9 - Translators' NotesNET BibleThe NET Bible's detailed footnotes on Jeremiah 9 - the chapter division and the speaker of the opening lament (v. 1), the bow-and-arrow imagery of the lying tongue (vv. 3, 8), and the much-quoted contrast between boasting in wisdom, might, and riches and boasting in the knowledge of God (vv. 23-24).
Where this echoes in Scripture
Oh That My Head Were Waters
- Luke 19:41-42And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it... the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.The weeping of verse 1 answered - the One who wept over the same city, knowing its ruin.
- Psalm 120:2-4Deliver my soul, O LORD, from lying lips, and from a deceitful tongue... Sharp arrows of the mighty.The lying tongue as a weapon - the same arrow-and-bow image as verses 3 and 8.
- James 3:5-8the tongue is a little member, and boasteth great things... it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison.The trained, destructive tongue of verses 3-5 - small, but able to set a whole world ablaze.
- Hosea 4:1there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land.The same diagnosis as verses 3 and 6 - lost truth tracing back to a lost knowledge of God.
- Malachi 3:3he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver... that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness.The melting and trying of verse 7 - judgment that purifies rather than merely destroys.
Call for the Mourning Women
- Deuteronomy 29:24-25Wherefore hath the LORD done thus unto this land?... Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD God of their fathers.The question and answer of verses 12-14 foretold - the land laid waste because the covenant was forsaken.
- Amos 5:16-17wailing shall be in all streets... and they shall call the husbandman to mourning, and such as are skilful of lamentation to wailing.The mourning women of verses 17-20 - skilled lament summoned for a coming day of grief.
- Jeremiah 8:3And death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of them that remain.The reign of death in verses 21-22 - the same shadow falling over the same people.
- Galatians 6:7Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.The bitter harvest of verses 15-16 - the wormwood reaped from what was sown.
- Romans 1:21when they knew God, they glorified him not as God... but became vain in their imaginations.The turning of verses 13-14 - from God’s voice to the imagination of one’s own heart.
Let Him That Glorieth Glory in This
- 1 Corinthians 1:30-31Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom... He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.Verse 24 quoted - the one true boast carried straight into the Gospel by the apostle.
- 2 Corinthians 10:17But he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.Verse 24 quoted a second time - the same redirected boast, set over the Lord alone.
- John 17:3And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.The knowledge that is the one boast of verse 24 - named as life eternal itself.
- Romans 2:28-29circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter.The uncircumcised heart of verse 26 - the inward reality that the outward sign was always meant to mark.
- Deuteronomy 10:16Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked.The call behind verse 26 - the heart itself, not only the body, turned toward God.