Jeremiah 7:29 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Cut off thy hair, O Jerusalem This was commonly practised in the time of great sorrow and mourning. And Jerusalem is here addressed as a woman in extreme misery, and exhorted to take upon her the habit and disposition of a mourner, and to bewail the calamities which were fallen upon her. But some have observed that the Hebrew word נזר, which we translate barely the hair, signifies something more, namely, votive, or Nazarite hair; and they think the prophet alludes to the law concerning Nazarites, (Numbers 6:9,) whereby it was ordered that, if any one should die near them, they should immediately shave off their hair. They suppose, therefore, the sense here is, that so many would be killed in Jerusalem by the Chaldeans, that if there were any Nazarites in the city, they would be all obliged on that account to shave off their hair: by which is signified that a great number of the inhabitants would be slain. And take up a lamentation on high places Or, for the high places, as some read it; namely, where they had worshipped their idols, and offered their sacrifices, there they must now bemoan their misery. Or the words may, as some suppose, be intended to signify the cries and lamentations of the watchmen, who were placed on high towers and on hills, to observe the country around; and who are represented as seeing, on this occasion, scenes of calamity and slaughter on every side, and continually fresh subjects of alarm. For the Lord hath rejected the generation of his wrath This sinful generation, who have so highly provoked him. As God is said to reject or cast off his people when he gives them up into the hands of their enemies, so he is said to choose them again at their restoration from captivity, Isaiah 14:1.