Bible Strands
Jeremiah 9:19
For the sound of wailing is heard from Zion: ‘How devastated we are! How great is our shame! For we have abandoned the land because our dwellings have been torn down.’”
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — The prophet addresses the people of Judah during a period of national collapse, framing their defeat as a moment that demands immediate communal lament.
The words — נְהִי (nehi) translates to “wailing,” and שֻׁדָּדְנוּ (shuddadnu) means “we have been devastated,” capturing the auditory and physical reality of the disaster.
The thread — The motif of inescapable judgment and forced displacement appears in Jeremiah 4:13, Deuteronomy 28:29, and Ezekiel 7:16.
Why it lands — The text demands that readers recognize national ruin and public shame as direct outcomes of covenant abandonment, requiring honest mourning before any hope of restoration.
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 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.
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 4:13 Behold, he advances like the clouds, his chariots like the whirlwind. His horses are swifter than eagles. Woe to us, for we are ruined!
- Deuteronomy 28:29 and at noon you will grope about like a blind man in the darkness. You will not prosper in your ways. Day after day you will be oppressed and plundered, with no one to save you.
- Ezekiel 7:16 The survivors will escape and live in the mountains, moaning like doves of the valley, each for his own iniquity.
- Leviticus 18:25 Even the land has become defiled, so I am punishing it for its sin, and the land will vomit out its inhabitants.
- Leviticus 18:28 So if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it spewed out the nations before you.
- Leviticus 20:22 You are therefore to keep all My statutes and ordinances, so that the land where I am bringing you to live will not vomit you out.
- Jeremiah 2:14 Is Israel a slave? Was he born into slavery? Why then has he become prey?
- Jeremiah 4:20 Disaster after disaster is proclaimed, for the whole land is laid waste. My tents are destroyed in an instant, my curtains in a moment.
- Jeremiah 4:30 And you, O devastated one, what will you do, though you dress yourself in scarlet, though you adorn yourself with gold jewelry, though you enlarge your eyes with paint? You adorn yourself in vain; your lovers despise you; they want to take your life.
- Lamentations 4:15 “Go away! Unclean!” men shouted at them. “Away, away! Do not touch us!” So they fled and wandered. Among the nations it was said, “They can stay here no longer.”