Jeremiah 9:17–22, King James Version
Italic words were supplied in the English translation for clarity.
Jeremiah 9:17–22
Skilled Mourning Women Teach the Community to Lament
Call the skilled mourning women, and let them teach a dirge
Thus 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: and 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. 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.
Their role must not be trivialized as emotional excess or used to assign grief labor only to women. Cunning here is skill. The community needs teachers of lament, not a scolding that tears are unmanly.
Death climbs through windows while bodies fall like dung
Yet 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. For 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. Speak, 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.
Children outside and young men in streets are the cut-off. The image is public death, not a cue to display corpses. Daughters learning lament is transmission of necessary speech, not a gendered doom.
How this should shape us
Honor skilled mourners. Learn to lament instead of outsourcing grief to women and then mocking them. Do not treat unburied bodies as spectacle.
Teach it back
Explain Jeremiah 9:17–22 in your own words. Name its place in Jeremiah, one source-controlled observation, one uncertainty, one enduring truth, and one harmful use the passage does not authorize.
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Research trail and exact locationsThe source record behind this section
Supports: Exact displayed KJV wording, verse order, paragraph metadata, supplied-word markup, and complete thought-unit coverage.
Jeremiah 9:17–22, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM-derived repository corpus
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording and morphology checked at the exact unit without treating morphology as a critical apparatus or interpretation.
Open Scriptures MorphHB v2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Jer.xml, OSIS 9:17–22
Supports: Verse-level controls for Hebrew, syntax, older KJV language, dates, names, textual problems, and material translation alternatives.
Official NET Bible Jeremiah PDF, pp. 1258-1459, translator, study, and textual notes attached to Jeremiah 9:17–22
Supports: Reader-oriented historical, literary, theological, and pastoral synthesis with ancient-to-modern limits.
Enter the Bible Jeremiah course, Summary, Outline, Background, and Introductory Issues: call, early preaching, temple sermon, and laments; applied to Jeremiah 9:17–22
Supports: Current university-level literary-historical synthesis and explicit composition questions.
Yale Bible Study, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Jeremiah Part 1 study guide, pp. 1-6: composition, Josianic setting, temple sermon, and imperial context; applied to Jeremiah 9:17–22
Supports: Controls gendered and sexualized rhetoric, Jeremiah's body and confessions, women mourners, celibacy, and ethical reading of violent imagery.
Carvalho, 'Whose Gendered Language of God?,' Currents 43.3 (2016), pp. 13-15; applied to Jeremiah 9:17–22
Supports: Abstract-level control for reading Jeremiah's confessions as protest and communication amid loss; no inaccessible page detail is claimed.
O'Connor, 'Lamenting Back to Life,' Interpretation 62.1 (2008), abstract and bibliographic pages 34-47; applied only at inspected abstract level to Jeremiah 9:17–22
Sources for This Section
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Biblical text
King James (Authorized) Version — eng-kjv2006
eBible.org and CrossWire Bible Society
USFM archive eng-kjv2006_usfm.zip; source files dated 2026-08-19; downloaded 2026-08-24; archive SHA-256 aec1b3b26c622fd3d963d2bbac963016b9513246ffbfa20da00bb100372ea007; normalized corpus SHA-256 09aef51d90488aa7b9722b3fd9a93f4b25f6bf2064c5fd798fb39673c300ddf2.
Supports: Exact displayed KJV wording, verse order, paragraph metadata, supplied-word markup, and complete thought-unit coverage.
Exact location: Jeremiah 9:17–22, pinned eng-kjv2006 USFM-derived repository corpus
Open source ↗hebrew text and morphology
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible: Jeremiah
Open Scriptures
Open Scriptures, release 2.2; fixed commit
Supports: Masoretic Hebrew wording and morphology checked at the exact unit without treating morphology as a critical apparatus or interpretation.
Exact location: Open Scriptures MorphHB v2.2, commit 6a5db284c715c18b239422e57bb89684e6a19f00, wlc/Jer.xml, OSIS 9:17–22
Open the fixed Hebrew Jeremiah file ↗translation and translator notes
NET Bible: Jeremiah with Translator, Textual, and Study Notes
Biblical Studies Press
Biblical Studies Press; official eBible PDF distribution, NET Bible Second Edition; official PDF accessed 2026
Supports: Verse-level controls for Hebrew, syntax, older KJV language, dates, names, textual problems, and material translation alternatives.
Exact location: Official NET Bible Jeremiah PDF, pp. 1258-1459, translator, study, and textual notes attached to Jeremiah 9:17–22
Open the official NET Jeremiah PDF ↗modern scholarly book course
Jeremiah: Summary, Outline, Background, Introductory Issues, Themes, and Bible in the World
Terence E. Fretheim and Michael Chan
Enter the Bible, Luther Seminary, current public course accessed 2026
Supports: Reader-oriented historical, literary, theological, and pastoral synthesis with ancient-to-modern limits.
Exact location: Enter the Bible Jeremiah course, Summary, Outline, Background, and Introductory Issues: call, early preaching, temple sermon, and laments; applied to Jeremiah 9:17–22
Open the Enter the Bible Jeremiah course ↗open university study guide series
Jeremiah and Ezekiel: Jeremiah Parts 1-3 Study Guides
Joel S. Baden and Jacqueline Vayntrub
Yale Bible Study, 2024
Supports: Current university-level literary-historical synthesis and explicit composition questions.
Exact location: Yale Bible Study, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, Jeremiah Part 1 study guide, pp. 1-6: composition, Josianic setting, temple sermon, and imperial context; applied to Jeremiah 9:17–22
Open the Yale Jeremiah and Ezekiel course ↗peer reviewed open access gender critical article
Whose Gendered Language of God? Contemporary Gender Theory and Divine Gender in the Prophets
Corrine L. Carvalho
Currents in Theology and Mission 43.3, 2016
Supports: Controls gendered and sexualized rhetoric, Jeremiah's body and confessions, women mourners, celibacy, and ethical reading of violent imagery.
Exact location: Carvalho, 'Whose Gendered Language of God?,' Currents 43.3 (2016), pp. 13-15; applied to Jeremiah 9:17–22
Open Carvalho on prophetic gender language ↗peer reviewed lament and trauma article
Lamenting Back to Life
Kathleen M. O'Connor
Interpretation 62.1, 2008
Supports: Abstract-level control for reading Jeremiah's confessions as protest and communication amid loss; no inaccessible page detail is claimed.
Exact location: O'Connor, 'Lamenting Back to Life,' Interpretation 62.1 (2008), abstract and bibliographic pages 34-47; applied only at inspected abstract level to Jeremiah 9:17–22
Open the publisher record for O'Connor on lament ↗