7:29-34 In token both of sorrow and of slavery, Jerusalem must be degraded, and separated from God, as she had been separated to him. The heart is the place in which God has chosen to put his name; but if sin has the innermost and uppermost place there, we pollute the temple of the Lord. The destruction of Jerusalem appears here very terrible. The slain shall be many; they having made it the place of their sin. Evil pursues sinners, even after death. Those who will not, by the grace of God, be cured of vain mirth, shall, by the justice of God, be deprived of all mirth. How many ruin their health and property without complaining, when engaged in Satan's service! May we learn to relish holy joys, and to sit loose to all others though lawful.

Verses 29-34. - Tophet, the greatest of all abominations; the beginning of the Divine retribution. Verse 29. - Cut off thine hair. The "daughter of Zion," i.e. the community of Jerusalem, is addressed; this appears from the verb being in the feminine. It is a choice expression which the prophet employs - literally, shear off thy crown (i.e. thy chief ornament). The act was to be a sign of mourning (see Job 1:20; Micah 1:16). Some think there is also a reference to the vow of the Nazarite (the word for "crown" being here nezer, which is also the word rendered in Authorized Version, "separation," i.e. "consecration," in the law of the Nazarite (Numbers 6.). But neither in this context nor anywhere else have we any support for the application of the term "Nazarite" to the people of Israel. On high places; rather, on (the) bare hills (see on Jeremiah 3:21). The generation of his wrath; i.e. on which his wrath is to be poured out (comp. Isaiah 10:6).

Cut off thine hair, O Jerusalem, and cast it away,.... This supplement is made, because the word is feminine; and therefore cannot be directed to the prophet, but to Jerusalem, and its inhabitants; shaving the head is a sign of mourning, Job 1:20 and this is enjoined, to show that there would soon be a reason for it; wherefore it follows:

and take up a lamentation on high places: that it might be heard afar off; or because of the idolatry frequently committed in high places. The Targum is,

"pluck off the hair for thy great ones that are carried captive, and take up a lamentation for the princes:''

for the Lord hath rejected and forsaken the generation of his wrath; a generation of men, deserving of the wrath of God, and appointed to it, on whom he determined to pour it out; of which his rejection and forsaking of them was a token: this was remarkably true of that generation in which Christ and his Acts 54ed, who disbelieved the Messiah, and had no faith in him, and spoke lying and blasphemous words concerning him; and therefore were rejected and forsaken by the Lord; and wrath came upon them to the uttermost.

29. Jeremiah addresses Jerusalem under the figure of a woman, who, in grief for her lost children, deprives her head of its chief ornament and goes up to the hills to weep (Jud 11:37, 38; Isa 15:2).

hair—flowing locks, like those of a Nazarite.

high places—The scene of her idolatries is to be the scene of her mourning (Jer 3:21).

generation of his wrath—the generation with which He is wroth. So Isa 10:6; "the people of My wrath."

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