CHAPTER 9 Ju1. 19 
Oh that my head were waters, and my eyes a spring of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people! 2Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them! For they are all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men.
God's Reply to Jeremiah
3They bend their tongue, as their bow, for falsehood; and they are grown strong in the land, but not for truth: for they proceed from evil to evil, and they don’t know Me, says Yahweh. 4Beware everyone of his neighbour, and don’t trust in any brother; for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbour will go about with slanders. 5They will deceive each one his neighbour and will not speak the truth: they have taught their tongue to speak lies; they weary themselves to commit iniquity. 6Your habitation is in the midst of deceit; through deceit they refuse to know Me, says Yahweh. 7Therefore thus says Yahweh of Armies, Behold, I will melt them, and try them; for how should I deal with the daughter of My people? 8Their tongue is a deadly arrow; it speaks deceit: one speaks peaceably to his neighbour with his mouth, but in his heart he lays wait for him. 9Shall I not visit them for these things, says Yahweh; shall not My soul be avenged on such a nation as this? 10For the mountains will I take up a weeping and wailing, and for the pastures of the wilderness a lamentation, because they are burned up, so that none passes through; neither can men hear the voice of the livestock; both the birds of the sky and the animals are fled, they are gone. 11I will make Jerusalem heaps, a dwelling place of jackals; and I will make the cities of Judah a desolation, without inhabitant. 12Who is the wise man, that may understand this? Who is he to whom the mouth of Yahweh has spoken, that he may declare it? Why is the land perished and burned up like a wilderness, so that none passes through? 13Yahweh says, Because they have forsaken My law which I set before them, and have not obeyed My voice, neither walked therein, 14but have walked after the stubbornness of their own heart, and after the Baals, which their fathers taught them; 15therefore thus says Yahweh of Armies, the God of Israel, Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink. 16I will scatter them also among the nations, whom neither they nor their fathers have known; and I will send the sword after them, until I have consumed them.
The Wailing Women Summoned
17Thus says Yahweh of Armies, Consider, and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for the skilful women, that they may come: 18and let them make haste, and take up a wailing for us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush out with waters. 19For a voice of wailing is heard out of Zion, How are we ruined! We are greatly confounded, because we have forsaken the land, because they have cast down our dwellings. 20Yet hear the word of Yahweh, you women, and let your ear receive the word of His mouth; and teach your daughters wailing, and each one her neighbour lamentation. 21For death has come up into our windows, it is entered into our palaces; to cut off the children from outside, and the young men from the streets. 22Speak, Thus says Yahweh, The dead bodies of men shall fall as dung on the open field, and as the handful after the harvester; and none shall gather them. 23Thus says Yahweh, Don’t let the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, don’t let the rich man glory in his riches; 24but let him who glories glory in this, that he has understanding, and knows Me, that I am Yahweh who exercises loving kindness, justice, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, says Yahweh. 25Behold, the days come, says Yahweh, that I will punish all those who are circumcised along with the uncircumcised: 26Egypt, Judah, Edom and the children of Ammon, Moab and all that have the corners of their hair cut off, who dwell in the wilderness; for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all the house of Israel are uncircumcised in heart.

Commentary

9:1,2 Jeremiah’s feelings here are contradictory. On the one hand, he so loved the wayward children of God that he wished he could find more tears to weep for them; on the other, he wished to go right away from them and live in total isolation, like a lonely shepherd who has a booth in which he sleeps in the desert. All God’s true servants will have had these contradictory feelings; Jeremiah sets the example of ultimately sticking with God’s people, indeed at the end of the book we find him going down to Egypt with them, despite God warning them not to- when he could have had a respectable retirement in the wealth of Babylon. But we can too easily assume that these are the thoughts of Jeremiah. The references to "my people" in the passage point us toward God as the person expressing these feelings. And then in:3 we have the speaker defined as God. So these were also God's thoughts. He wished He had human tear ducts to weep with... this was how He felt for them.
9:7 Jeremiah was told to "know and try" Israel's way, just as God said that He did (Jer. 6:27 cp. 9:7; 17:10). Our 'judging' of others, as well as ourselves, must be according to God's judgments of them.
9:9 Such a nation as this- Our world’s devaluing and misunderstanding of sin has likely affected all of us. We see the rich abusing the poor, manipulation of all sorts going on, petty injustices, hypocrisy in the ecclesia, falsehood, cheating in business, white lies, unkindness to ones’ brethren… and we shrug and think that it’s just normal, part of life as it is. And yet for the prophets, these things were a catastrophe. Saying one thing to someone whilst feeling differently about them in the heart was the reason for God passionately wishing to take vengeance “on a nation such as this”- note that the whole nation are counted as guilty, in that society just shrugged at hypocritical words. What to us are the daily minor sins and injustices of life are to God issues of cosmic proportion. Nobody in our current society would consider what you think to be a criminal act; and nobody did in early Israel, either. But time and again, Jeremiah passionately calls down judgment for “evil thoughts” and “evil hearts” (3:17; 4:14; 7:24; 9:14; 11:8; 13:10; 14:14; 16:12; 18:12; 23:17).
9:18 A wailing for us- As God had lamented that the destroyer would come “upon us” (6:22,26). The “us” is God and Israel. The tragedy is awful, beyond words. All commentary is bathos. His love is wondrous.  God delicately speaks as if He is married to Israel, and that even in their sufferings, He would suffer with them, as a husband suffers with his wife. “The destroyer will come upon us” even sounds as if God let Himself in a way be ‘destroyed’ in Israel’s destruction; for each of us dies a little in the death of those we love. The idea of God being destroyed in the destruction of His people may be the basis of the descriptions of Zion as being left widowed (Lam. 1:1; Is. 54:1-8). We ask the question- if she was a widow, who died? Her husband, God, was as it were dead. The very idea of the death of God  is awful and obnoxious. But this was and is the depth of God’s feelings at His peoples’ destruction. This is the almost unbelievable extent of God’s pain and hurt for His people. Truly did it hurt God more than His children knew to punish them.