The judgment of Judah is the ruin of her cities, the dispersion of her people in foreign lands, and extermination by the sword. Nothing is left for this doomed nation but to sing its funeral song; to send for the professional wailing women, that they may come and chant their dirges, not over the dead but over the living who are condemned to die: _Thus said Iahvah Sabaoth_ (here as in ver. 6, LXX. omits the expressive _Sabaoth_), _Mark ye well_ the present crisis, and what it implies (cf. ii. 10; LXX. wrongly omits this emphatic term), _and summon the women that sing dirges, that they come, and unto the skilful women send ye, that they come_ [LXX. omits], _and hasten_ [LXX. _and speak and_] _to lift up the death-wail over us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids pour down waters_. The "singing women" of 2 Chron. xxxv. 25, or the "minstrels" of St. Matt. ix. 23, are intended. The reason assigned for thus inviting them assumes that the prophet's forecast is already fulfilled. Already, as in viii. 19, Jeremiah hears the loud wailing of the captives as they are driven away from their ruined homes: _For the sound of the death-wail is heard from Sion, "How are we undone! We are sore ashamed"_--of our false confidence and foolish security and deceitful hopes--"_for_, after all, _we have left the land, for our dwellings have cast_ (_us_) _out_!" The last two lines appear to be parallels, which is against the rendering, _For men have cast down our dwellings_. Cf. Lev. xviii. 25; chap. xxii. 28. From the wailing women, the address now seems to turn to the Judean women generally; but perhaps the former are still intended, as their peculiar calling was probably hereditary and passed on from mother to daughter: _For hear, ye women, the word of Iahvah, and let your ear take in the word of His mouth! and teach ye your daughters the death-wail, and each her companion the lamentation; for_ "_Death scales our lattices, Enters our palaces, To cut off boy without, The young men from the streets._"