That there came certain from Shechem, from Shiloh, and from Samaria, [even] fourscore men, having their beards shaven, and their clothes rent, and having cut themselves, with offerings and incense in their hand, to bring [them] to the house of the LORD.
Ver. 5. That there came certain from Shechem and from Shiloh.] Innocent men, qui ne verbulo quidem immanem bestiam offenderant, who had not so much as by the least word offended this brutish, butcherly man; but came in the simplicity of their hearts to worship God, and to wait upon Gedaliah by the way, which last seemeth to be Ishmael's main quarrel against them. See here Ecclesiastes 9:12. See Trapp on " Ecc 9:12 "
Having their beards shaven, and their clothes rent, and having cut themselves.] These might be well minded men, though partly through ignorance of the law in those blind times, and partly through excess of passion, they went too far, heathen-like, in their outward expressions of sorrow Lev 19:27 Deu 14:1 for the public calamity of their country.
To bring them to the house of the Lord,] i.e., To the place where God's house lately had been, though now razed and ruined, that there they might worship as they could, and bewail the desolation of the city and temple, as Jerome saith the Jews did yearly the destruction of the second temple, bribing the Roman soldiers that kept it to let them come to the place and weep over it.