(4) Of grievous deaths.--Literally, deaths from diseases, including, perhaps, famine (as in Jeremiah 14:18), as contrasted with the more immediate work of the sword.
They shall not be lamented.--Among a people who attached such importance to the due observance of funeral obsequies as the Jews did, the neglect of those obsequies was, of course, here, as in Jeremiah 22:18, a symptom of extremest misery. Like features have presented themselves in the pestilences or sieges of other cities and other times, as in the description in Lucretius (vi. 1278) :--
"Nec mos ille sepulturae remanebat in urbe,
Quo pius hic populus semper consuerat humari."
"No more the customed rites of sepulture
Were practised in the city, such as wont
Of old to tend the dead with reverent care."
Compare the account of the plague at Athens in Thucydides (ii. 52).
Verse 4. - Grievous deaths; literally, deaths of sicknesses; i.e. all kinds of painful deaths, including (as Jeremiah 14:18 shows) death by starvation. They shall not be lamented. The absence of sepulture has already been pointed to several times as a feature of the horror of the times (Jeremiah 8:2; Jeremiah 14:16; comp. Jeremiah 7:33), but this is a new and affecting touch. Dr. Payne Smith aptly refers to the plagues of Athens and London, in which the gentler elements of human nature were for the time almost extinguished.
16:1-9 The prophet must conduct himself as one who expected to see his country ruined very shortly. In the prospect of sad times, he is to abstain from marriage, mourning for the dead, and pleasure. Those who would convince others of the truths of God, must make it appear by their self-denial, that they believe it themselves. Peace, inward and outward, family and public, is wholly the work of God, and from his loving-kindness and mercy. When He takes his peace from any people, distress must follow. There may be times when it is proper to avoid things otherwise our duty; and we should always sit loose to the pleasures and concerns of this life.
They shall die of grievous deaths,.... Such as the sword, famine, and pestilence. The Targum particularly adds famine. It may be rendered, "deaths of diseases, or sicknesses" (u); such as are brought on by long sickness and lingering distempers; by which a man consumes gradually, as by famine, and is not snatched away at once; and which are very grievous to bear.
They shall not be lamented, neither shall they be buried; which two offices are usually done to the dead by their surviving relations; who mourn for them, and express their grief by various gestures, and which especially were used by the eastern nations; and take care that they have a decent burial: but neither of these would now be, which is mentioned as an aggravation of the calamity; that not only the deaths they should die of would be grievous ones, but after death no regard would be shown them; and that either because there would be none to do these things for them; or they would be so much taken up in providing for their own safety, and so much in concern for their own preservation, that they would not be at leisure to attend to the above things:
but they shall be as dung upon the face of the earth; lie and rot there, and be dung to the earth; which would be a just retaliation, for their filthy and abominable actions committed in the land:
and they shall be consumed by the sword, and by famine; the grievous deaths before mentioned; the sword without, and the famine within; the one more sudden, and at once, the other more lingering; and therefore may be more especially designed by the death of lingering sicknesses referred to:
and their carcasses shall be meat for the fowls of heaven, and for the beasts of the earth; lying unburied; see Jeremiah 7:33.
(u) "mortibus aegrotationum", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, "aegritudium", Munster, Vatablus; "mortibus morborum", Schmidt. So Stockius, p. 340, 597, who restrains it to the death of individuals by the pestilence.
They shall not be lamented.--Among a people who attached such importance to the due observance of funeral obsequies as the Jews did, the neglect of those obsequies was, of course, here, as in Jeremiah 22:18, a symptom of extremest misery. Like features have presented themselves in the pestilences or sieges of other cities and other times, as in the description in Lucretius (vi. 1278) :--
"Nec mos ille sepulturae remanebat in urbe,
Quo pius hic populus semper consuerat humari."
"No more the customed rites of sepulture
Were practised in the city, such as wont
Of old to tend the dead with reverent care."
Compare the account of the plague at Athens in Thucydides (ii. 52).
They shall not be lamented, neither shall they be buried; which two offices are usually done to the dead by their surviving relations; who mourn for them, and express their grief by various gestures, and which especially were used by the eastern nations; and take care that they have a decent burial: but neither of these would now be, which is mentioned as an aggravation of the calamity; that not only the deaths they should die of would be grievous ones, but after death no regard would be shown them; and that either because there would be none to do these things for them; or they would be so much taken up in providing for their own safety, and so much in concern for their own preservation, that they would not be at leisure to attend to the above things:
but they shall be as dung upon the face of the earth; lie and rot there, and be dung to the earth; which would be a just retaliation, for their filthy and abominable actions committed in the land:
and they shall be consumed by the sword, and by famine; the grievous deaths before mentioned; the sword without, and the famine within; the one more sudden, and at once, the other more lingering; and therefore may be more especially designed by the death of lingering sicknesses referred to:
and their carcasses shall be meat for the fowls of heaven, and for the beasts of the earth; lying unburied; see Jeremiah 7:33.
(u) "mortibus aegrotationum", V. L. Pagninus, Montanus, "aegritudium", Munster, Vatablus; "mortibus morborum", Schmidt. So Stockius, p. 340, 597, who restrains it to the death of individuals by the pestilence.