«　WEEK 1　DAY 3　»

　　Jer. 9:17-19 Thus says Jehovah of hosts, Consider, and call for the mourning women to come, and send for the skillful women to come; let them hasten and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may shed tears and our eyelids may pour forth water. For a voice of wailing was heard from Zion: How we are ruined! We are utterly put to shame!…

　　In the Bible there is a weeping prophet…He said, “My eye runs down with water” (Lam. 1:16), and, “My eye runs down with streams of water” (Lam. 3:48)….The feeling to weep was very heavy in him. But when you read the book of Jeremiah, you can sense that, although he wept, his emotion had been disciplined. His sorrowful and weeping emotion had been restricted so that God could come to him and use him to express the sorrowful feelings that were in God’s heart. Although God was grieved and hurt because of His people, He had to find someone on this earth who had these feelings. Then when His Spirit came upon that particular one and put those feelings in his spirit, he would then express the sorrowful feeling of God out of his emotion. If Jeremiah had been a merry and cheerful prophet, God would not have been able to use him. Hence, in order that God may be fully expressed through you, you need a spiritual emotion. (CWWL, 1959, vol. 4, “Lessons on Prayer,” p. 88)

　　The book of Jeremiah has as its particular nature and standing God’s tenderheartedness plus God’s righteousness. Our God is a tenderhearted God, and He is absolutely righteous. He is full of compassion, sympathy, and tender care.

　　This book is also an autobiography in which Jeremiah tells us of his situation, his person, and his feeling, revealing his tender heart. Jehovah is the tenderhearted God, and in being tenderhearted Jeremiah is absolutely one with God….In his weeping Jeremiah represented God. Thus, God could use a prophet like Jeremiah to express Him, speak for Him, and represent Him on earth.

　　According to the book of Jeremiah, God’s love is a composition of His tender care, compassion, and sympathy. Even while He chastises His elect people Israel, He is compassionate toward them. Regarding this, God can be compared to a father who weeps as he disciplines his child because he loves the child….Jeremiah wept on God’s behalf; his weeping expressed God’s feeling. We may say that God wept within Jeremiah’s weeping, for in his weeping Jeremiah was one with God.

　　In Jeremiah 9 we see not only Jehovah’s correction to Israel, His hypocritical worshippers, but also His feeling concerning Israel’s suffering of His correction….Jehovah said that for the mountains He would take up a weeping and wailing, and for the pastures of the wilderness, a lamentation. He would do this because they had been burned up so that no one passed through, and the sound of cattle was not heard. Both the birds of the sky and the beasts had fled and gone (v. 10). Then Jehovah said, “I will make Jerusalem a heap of ruins, / A habitation of jackals; / And I will make the cities of Judah / A desolation without inhabitant” (v. 11). This indicates that although Jehovah was punishing Israel, He was still sympathetic toward them. On the one hand, He was punishing Israel; on the other hand, He was sympathizing with His punished people.

　　[In Jeremiah 9:17-19] Jehovah proposed that the mourning women, professional wailers, come and wail “for us.” In these verses the words us and our indicate that Jehovah joined Himself to the suffering people and was one with them in their suffering. The sympathetic God who punished was also among His punished people….Eventually, those who wailed were wailing not only for Israel but also for Jehovah. Jehovah Himself was weeping in sympathy for His people. He was like a mother who, while spanking her child, weeps along with her child. (Life-study of Jeremiah, pp. 1, 5, 78-79)

　　Further Reading: CWWL, 1959, vol. 4, “Lessons on Prayer,” ch. 7; Truth Lessons—Level Three, vol. 4, lsn. 59