Jeremiah 9:1 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

O that my head, &c. The prophet sympathizes with the calamities of his people, as before, Jeremiah 1:19; Jeremiah 8:21; and thereby excites them to a sense of their own misfortunes, that they might humble themselves under the mighty hand of God. The passage is a fine instance of the pathetic, wherein Jeremiah so much excels. That I might weep day and night for the slain, &c. For the multitudes of his countrymen that he foresaw would fall by the sword of the Babylonians. When we hear of great numbers slain in battles and sieges, we ought not to make a light matter of it, but to be much affected with it; yea, though they be not of the daughter of our people For of whatever people they are, they are of the same human nature with us; and there are so many precious lives lost, as dear to them as ours to us, and so many precious souls gone into eternity.