Jeremiah 9:15,16 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

I will feed them, &c., with wormwood See on Deuteronomy 29:18. The word rendered wormwood here, it seems, had better be rendered wolfsbane, as signifying an herb which is not only bitter and nauseous, but also noxious. And give them water of gall to drink Or juice of hemlock, as some read it; some other herb that is poisonous as well as distasteful. By these expressions is signified not only a scarcity of meat and drink, but the most grievous calamities. I will scatter them also among the heathen They have been corrupted by their intimacy with heathen idolaters, with whom they mingled themselves, and whose works they learned, and now they shall lose themselves among those through whom they lost their virtue. Whom neither they nor their fathers have known They set up gods to worship, which they had not known, strange gods, new gods, Deuteronomy 32:17; and now God will scatter them among those people whom they had not known, those with whom they can claim no acquaintance, and from whom therefore they can expect no favour. The nations to the east, beyond the Euphrates and Tigris, seem to be chiefly meant here, whom the Jews knew little or nothing of before they were carried into captivity among them. And from that time to this the Jews have been scattered among those people. They are now also scattered through almost all the nations of the earth; so that this prophecy has received its full accomplishment in the most literal sense; for they have indeed been scattered among those whom neither they nor their fathers had known. And what deserves highly to be remarked is, that among none of these nations have they attained to any share of supreme power, but have always lived among them upon courtesy or sufferance. And I will send a sword after them, &c. A judgment threatened by Moses in case of their disobedience, Leviticus 26:23, and fulfilled upon several of the Jewish captives in Egypt and elsewhere.