The Pulpit Commentary on Jeremiah 4:19

The Pulpit Commentary · Joseph S. Exell and contributors · Public domain

My bowels. It is doubted whether the speaker in Jeremiah 4:19-21 is the prophet or the whole nation. Jeremiah 4:19 reminds us of Isaiah 15:5; Isaiah 16:11 and Isaiah 21:3, Isaiah 21:4, and would be quite in harmony with the elegiac tone of our prophet elsewhere; the Targum too already regards the passage as an exclamation of the prophet. On the other hand, the phrase "my tents" (verse 20) certainly implies that the people, or the pious section of the people, is the speaker. Both views may perhaps be united. The prophet may be the speaker in verse 19, but simply (as is the case with so many of the psalmists) as the representative of his fellow-believers, whom in verse 20 he brings on the stage more directly. Verse 19 is best rendered as a series of exclamations—

"My bowels! my bowels! I must writhe in pain!

The walls of my heart! My heart moaneth unto me!

I cannot hold my peace!

For thou hast heard, O my soul, the sound of the trumpet,

The alarm of war!"

Observe, the "soul" hears; the "heart" is pained. So generally the one is more active, the other more passive. The Hebrew margin gives, for "I must writhe," "I must wait" (comp. Micah 7:7); but this rendering does not suit the context. The walls of my heart. A poetical way of saying, "My heart beats."

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