Jeremiah 9:10

I will take up a weeping and wailing for the mountains, a dirge over the wilderness pasture, for they have been scorched so no one passes through, and the lowing of cattle is not heard. Both the birds of the air and the beasts have fled; they have gone away.

Berean Standard Bible

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Study note

Setting — The LORD speaks to Judah through Jeremiah, declaring imminent judgment immediately after asking whether He should not punish such a nation (Jeremiah 9:9). This pronouncement of total desolation directly precedes the decree to turn Jerusalem into a rubble heap and Judah’s cities into uninhabited ruins (Jeremiah 9:11).

The words — The Hebrew אֶשָּׂא ('e.Sa) means "I will take up" or "raise," introducing the prophetic dirge, while נְא֤וֹת (ne.'ot) denotes the "pastures" or "dwelling places" of the wilderness that are now abandoned. These terms anchor the visual of a landscape stripped of all life and human passage.

The thread — This pattern of ecological and demographic collapse appears in Jeremiah 12:4, where the land mourns because of the evil of its residents, and Hosea 4:3, which links the mourning of the land with the wasting away of its animals and birds. The motif of lamentation on barren heights also echoes Jeremiah 7:29.

Why it lands — The text demands recognition that covenant rebellion produces tangible, irreversible ruin across both human and natural realms. It requires the reader to confront the reality that divine judgment leaves no refuge, compelling immediate repentance rather than passive observation.

Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.

The Hebrew words

King James Version

For 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.

Cross-references

Jeremiah 12:4 How long will the land mourn and the grass of every field be withered? Because of the evil of its residents, the animals and birds have been swept away, for the people have said, “He cannot see what our end will be.”
Hosea 4:3 Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it will waste away with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air; even the fish of the sea disappear.
Jeremiah 7:29 Cut off your hair and throw it away. Raise up a lamentation on the barren heights, for the LORD has rejected and forsaken the generation of His wrath.’
Jeremiah 12:10 Many shepherds have destroyed My vineyard; they have trampled My plot of ground. They have turned My pleasant field into a desolate wasteland.
Ezekiel 14:15 Or if I send wild beasts through the land to leave it childless and desolate, with no man passing through it for fear of the beasts,
Ezekiel 29:11 No foot of man or beast will pass through, and it will be uninhabited for forty years.
Ezekiel 33:28 I will make the land a desolate waste, and the pride of her strength will come to an end. The mountains of Israel will become desolate, so that no one will pass through.
Isaiah 49:19 For your ruined and desolate places and your ravaged land will now indeed be too small for your people, and those who devoured you will be far away.
Jeremiah 2:6 They did not ask, ‘Where is the LORD who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us through the wilderness, through a land of deserts and pits, a land of drought and darkness, a land where no one travels and no one lives?’
Jeremiah 4:19 My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain! Oh, the pain in my chest! My heart pounds within me; I cannot be silent. For I have heard the sound of the horn, the alarm of battle.