The Second Sign: Abstention From Mourning (Jeremiah 16:5-7).
The second sign was to be seen as the abstention from mourning and from attendance at funerals. Proper mourning for the dead was again seen as an essential part of life. Not to do so would have been severely frowned on, for true mourning was seen as contributing to the well-being and continuity of the whole family. It ensured proper farewells, and proper succession, enabled release of emotions, and demonstrated proper respect for the one who had passed on. But death was to become so commonplace that there would be no time for such activities. Any who remained alive would be concentrating on their own near kin, and would have no time for mourning others.
“For thus says YHWH,
“Do not enter into the house of mourning,
Nor go to lament, nor bemoan them,
For I have taken away my peace from this people, the word of YHWH,
Even covenant love and tender mercies.”
Jeremiah was called on not to partake in mourning, especially a mourning-feast, which would be partly celebratory of the deceased, because mourning was connected with comfort and commiseration, and in the future that was coming there would be no comfort or commiseration for His people. And this was because YHWH had removed what was essential for the people's well-being, ‘even covenant love and tender mercies'. In other words He no longer had regard for them because they had rejected His covenant and would therefore leave them to face the worst and would offer them no comfort.
“Both great and small will die in this land,
They will not be buried,
Nor will men lament for them, nor cut themselves,
Nor make themselves bald for them,
Nor will men break bread for them in mourning,
To comfort them for the dead,
Nor will men give them the cup of consolation to drink,
For their father or for their mother.”
His abstention was intended to indicate that death would have no favourites. Both great and small would die equally. And none would be buried or mourned for. No one would undergo religious ritual on the behalf of others (cutting themselves and self-inflicted baldness were seen as signs of great emotional intensity and of contact with the gods, compare here Leviticus 19:28; Deuteronomy 14:1; 1 Kings 18:28. Thus the people are also seen as being unfaithful to their false gods). No one would participate in a wake in their memory. There would be no bread or wine offered in consolation to the households of the dead. The cup of consolation would appear to have been offered when a parent had died. For no one would indulge in mourning of any kind because circumstances would be so devastating.
So Jeremiah's abstention from everything connected with mourning would draw attention to the intensity of the desolation that was coming on the land, and would again raise questions in people's minds, enabling Jeremiah to press home his message.
For the custom of giving food and wine to the family of the bereaved compare Hosea 9:4; Ezekiel 24:17; Proverbs 31:6.