Jeremiah 9:3 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

They bend their tongues like their bow With a great deal of craft, their tongues are fitted for lying, as a bow which is bent is for shooting. Thus the psalmist compares the tongue to a bow and words of calumny and falsehood to arrows, Psalms 64:3-4. But they are not valiant for the truth They use their tongues in defence of lies rather than of the truths of God; and, in the administration of justice, they have not courage to stand by an honest cause that has truth on its side, if greatness and power be on the other side. Truth is fallen in the land, and they dare not lend a hand to help it up, Isaiah 59:14-15. They proceed from evil to evil From one sin to another, and from one degree of sin to another. They every day grow more bold in their wickedness, because they escape punishment, and they enrich themselves by their evil deeds, and so become formidable, defending and maintaining their wickedness by fresh acts of wickedness. And they know not me, saith the Lord And where men have not the true knowledge of God, what but evil can be expected from them? Observe, reader, men's ignorance of God is the cause of all their bad conduct one toward another.