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Jeremiah 7:29

King James Version (KJV)

“In our prayers we talk to God, in our Bible study God talks to us, and we had better let God do most of the talking.”
— D.L. Moody

Scripture focus

Cut off thine hair, [O Jerusalem], and cast [it] away, and take up a lamentation on high places; for the LORD hath rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath.

Jeremiah 7:29 — KJV

Commentary

Commentary on Jeremiah 7:29

Theological / Devotional

Cut off thine hair. The verb and the possessive pronoun “thine” are feminine in the Hebrew, showing that a woman is addressed. The gender is indicated in the KJV by the words “O Jerusalem,” which are supplied. The city is likened to a woman who, in the depth of her grief for her lost children, cuts off her hair and makes her way to the hills to bewail her bereavement (see Judges 11:37; Lam. 1:1–3). Cutting the hair was a sign of extreme sorrow (Job 1:20; Isa. 15:2; Jer. 16:6; 48:37; Micah 1:16). Some have seen a reference here to the flowing locks that the Nazirites wore as the badge or token of their consecration to God (see Num. 6:19), locks which, when a Nazirite became contaminated through contact with the dead, he was to shave off (Num. 6:6–21).

High places. Heb. shephayim, “bare hilltops.”

By SdaBc