Jeremiah 16:5,6 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Enter not into the house of mourning Or, of a mourning feast, according to the reading in the margin, the word מרזח, occurring also Amos 6:7, and being there rendered a banquet. The sense seems to be, Do not go to comfort such as mourn for any friends or relations dead; their feastings on those occasions being upon a consolatory account: those that die are most happy. For I have taken away my peace from this people That is, I have put a full period to their prosperity, and deprived them of every thing wherewith they might comfort themselves and one another; even loving-kindness and mercies These shall be shut up and restrained, which are the springs from whence all the streams of comfort flow to mankind. Both the great and the small shall die in this land The land of Canaan that used to be called the land of the living. They shall not be buried, &c. So many of all ranks and ages shall die that men shall have no time to bury them, or there shall not be a sufficient number left alive to bury the dead. Neither shall men lament for them Nor shall men have leisure, through their own miseries, to lament for the miseries of others. Or their own calamities shall be so great that they will render them insensible to the calamities of others. Nor cut themselves, &c. The law expressly forbade the Israelites to make any cuttings in their flesh at funeral obsequies, Leviticus 19:28; Deuteronomy 14:1. Notwithstanding which prohibition, this practice seems to have been adopted by the Jews, among other heathenish customs. Shaving of the head also was a usual expression of mourning, chap. Jeremiah 7:29.