Jeremiah 9:17-22 – It’s time for earnest intercession

The calamity with great intensity would be falling like an avalanche on the deceived people of Judah, yet they were clueless or merely couldn’t be bothered. So Jeremiah speaking for God in Jeremiah 9:17, encouraged that professional women mourners be hired to weep on the people’s behalf. The weeping of the professional mourners was often so skilfully done that it was difficult to tell that they were just doing a job. It would hope that the mourners weeping, could stimulate as well as teach the  hardened people of Judah to weep. Why? For the day of great calamity was dawning. Weeping would be the only thing needed when God’s judgment falls.

 

The judgment, Jeremiah said, would bring unimaginable, intolerable sufferings of catastrophic proportion. Describing the judgment, Jeremiah 9:18 said great wailing would be heard from Zion. Furthermore, her people would be shamefully scattered from there because their dwelling places were being brought down and destroyed.  Then in Jeremiah 9:20, God instructed that the women folks teach their daughters to weep and wail. Everyone was also encouraged to teach her neighbor how to sing a dirge, a funeral song. It was because that skill would be needed for the impending day of unimaginable judgment. Jeremiah 9:21-22 then went on to give the why for such an admonition. He said that death would be everywhere. Pestilence would come through their windows and affect the children and young men till none could be seen on the street or town square. Unburied corpses would be strewn all over the fields with no one to pick them up, much like the unpicked and fallen sheaves after a harvest.

Though we may not be in the similar condition described here in Jeremiah 9:21-22, the condition of our chaotic world is also beckoning us to a time of lament and prayer. Intercession with tears is so needed for what is happening in our world. The deplorable condition is palpable from Afghanistan to Ukraine, Russia to China, and the US to the rest of the world. Christians everywhere must rise up and intercede for their respective nations. We in Singapore, called by the name of the Lord,  must sense the urgency of the time too, and start praying like never before. Like 2 Chronicles 7:14, we must repent from our sins, and turn from our wicked way so that God will intervene, forgive our sins, and heal our land. Let us earnestly intercede!