Jeremiah 8:18
My sorrow is beyond healing; my heart is faint within me.
BSB
ASV
Oh that I could comfort myself against sorrow! my heart is faint within me.
KJV
When I would comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint in me.
Rare words are the text's own signal of a deliberate thread: the fewer the occurrences, the more the places it appears belong together.
(Verse 18) My sorrow is upon sorrow, my heart is mourning within me. As we have said before, the previous seventy sentences, which were said, were connected in order to establish: 'And they will bite you,' says the Lord, 'incurably: with the pain of your heart, you will faint.' However, in Hebrew, the word for pain, which is translated into Greek as ὀδύνη, is not so much a physical pain as it is a grimace of the mouth, contracted and resembling a laugh.
When I would comfort myself against terror,.... Either naturally, by eating and drinking, the necessary and lawful means of refreshment; or spiritually, by reading the word of God, and looking over the promises in it: my heart is faint in me; at the consideration of the calamities which were coming upon his people, and which were made known to him by a spirit of prophecy, of which he had no room to doubt. So the Targum takes them to be the words of the prophet, paraphrasing them, "for them, saith the prophet, my heart grieves.''
Death shall not now be, as it always used to be--the repose of the dead. When Job makes his court to the grave it is in hope of this, that there he shall rest with kings and counsellors of the earth; but now the ashes of the dead, even of kings and princes, shall be disturbed, and their bones scattered at the grave's mouth, Ps. cxli.
Rather, “O my comfort in sorrow: my heart faints for me.” The word translated “comfort” is by some supposed to be corrupt. With these mournful ejaculations a new strophe begins, ending with Jer 9:1, in which the prophet mourns over the miserable fate of his countrymen, among whom he had been earnestly laboring, but all in vain.
The lamentation of the prophet for the impending calamity of his country. against sorrow--or, with respect to sorrow. MAURER translates, "Oh, my exhilaration as to sorrow!" that is, "Oh, that exhilaration ('comfort', from an Arabic root, to shine as the rising sun) would shine upon me as to my sorrow!" in me--within me.
The walk8
Follow this verse’s cross-references two steps out. Each card is a verse this one points to, and beneath it the verses that one points to in turn. Where several different paths arrive at the same place, that place is listed first: the text keeps returning to it. Every stop shows its own words, and every stop is a page.
Through
Lamentations 5:17Because of this, our hearts are faint; because of these, our eyes grow dim—
leads to
My eyes fail from grief; they grow dim because of all my foes.
Why do you want more beatings? Why do you keep rebelling? Your head has a massive wound, and your whole heart is afflicted.
My eyes have grown dim with grief, and my whole body is but a shadow.
My eyes fail from weeping; I am churning within. My heart is poured out in grief over the destruction of the daughter of my people, because children and infants faint in the streets of…
Through
Isaiah 22:4Therefore I said, “Turn away from me, let me weep bitterly! Do not try to console me over the destruction of the daughter of my people.”
leads to
Oh, that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes a fountain of tears! I would weep day and night over the slain daughter of my people.
Through
Jeremiah 6:24We have heard the report; our hands hang limp. Anguish has gripped us, pain like that of a woman in labor.
leads to
For I hear a cry like a woman in labor, a cry of anguish like one bearing her first child—the cry of the Daughter of Zion gasping for breath, stretching out her hands to…
Damascus has become feeble; she has turned to flee. Panic has gripped her; anguish and pain have seized her like a woman in labor.
The king of Babylon has heard the report, and his hands hang limp. Anguish has gripped him, pain like that of a woman in labor.