Jeremiah 6:11 - Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible

Therefore. Heb. And; which seems to be a better connexion; for that which putteth him upon this work seems rather to be that Spirit of prophecy that is in him than any consideration drawn from them. I am full of the fury of the Lord; I am, as it were, filled with the fire of God's wrath and curses against this people, which I am forced to discharge myself of; a metonymy of the subject. See Ezekiel 3:3 Jeremiah 4:19. He doth not only complain of their stupidity, as in the former verse, but stirs up his indignation against them. I am weary with holding in; but he can contain himself no longer, which implies his great unwillingness to denounce these curses: q.d. The wrath of God, by the impulse of his Spirit, acting so violently with mine, that it will break out: see the like Job 32:18,19. Whereby it appears the prophet is not carried on by his own private spirit, but by the Spirit of God; he hath no delight in it, but is forced to be the messenger himself of his wrath; therefore if he be sharp against them, they must not impute; it to him, but to the Spirit of God, that constrains him thus to speak. I will pour it out, viz. in prophesying, noting the great plenty of it; a metaphor from violent rains, that we say do pour down upon the earth, Jeremiah 7:20 Revelation 16:1. Upon the children abroad; the streets being the places where usually little children are wont to sport themselves, Malachi 8:5. The same word used Psalms 8:2. Upon the assembly of young men together; their secret meetings, whether in harlots houses, Jeremiah 5:7, or for mirth and jollity, or to join either their strength or counsel together, which children are not capable of; for the Hebrews do not only call them youths that are past their childhood, possibly at fifteen or sixteen years of age, but men of twenty or thirty, grown to their full strength and maturity, in the flower of their years; yet it shall advantage them nothing. The husband with the wife, Heb. man with woman; the wife shall be taken as well as the husband, one sex as well as the other shall be a prey to the enemy. The aged with him that is full of days; not only men that may be termed old, as they may be from fifty to eighty, which are then said to be waxing old; but such as had upon the point filled up the number of their days, at the edge of the grave, Isaiah 65:20, called very aged, as Barzillai, 2 Samuel 19:32,34,35. The sense is, that all sorts, from the children to the decrepit old man, had so corrupted their ways, see Jeremiah 6:13, that their condition was desperate, and God would bring an enemy upon them should spare or pity none, of what sex or age soever.