"Consider now! Call for the wailing women to come; send for the most skillful of them. Let them come quickly and wail over us till our eyes overflow with tears and water streams from our eyelids. The sound of wailing is heard from Zion: `How ruined we are! How great is our shame! We must leave our land because our houses are in ruins.' Now, O women, hear the word of the LORD; open your ears to the words of his mouth. Teach your daughters how to wail; teach one another a lament. Death has climbed in through our windows and has entered our fortresses; it has cut off the children from the streets and the young men from the public squares." (Jeremiah 9:17-21)

It was also Jeremiah who wrote in Lamentations 3:48-51: "Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people. Mine eye trickleth down and ceaseth not, without any intermission, Till the LORD look down and behold from heaven. Mine eye affecteth mine heart because of all the daughters of my city." (KJV)

In effect, He was calling on them to weep for the same reason He wept over the city - because of their rejection of God, destruction loomed. (Luke 19:41)

The reason for weeping can be divided into three parts:

1. Weep because the barren will be blessed.

This seems contradictory. Most often, barrenness is seen as a curse; we immediately think of Hannah who later became the mother of the famous Prophet and King Maker, Samuel. She wept bitterly because she had not been able to give birth.

In our current society there is a kind of self inflicted bareness due to careers and economic conditions becoming more important than having children. Many would-be mothers have postponed giving birth, and by the time they decide to become mothers, they discover it has become too late.

In addition, we have often heard it said by couples preparing for marriage, "We don't want to bring children into this terrible world with all its problems of hate, drugs and violence."

Do you remember what Jesus said concerning Judas, that it would be better that he had never been born? Think about the mother of Luke John Helder, the "smiley face mail box pipe bomber" who brought fear to the belly of midwestern America. He smiled to the cameras as he got his 15 minutes of fame, for which he may spend the rest of his life in prison.

Is it possible that if Luke's mother had known that she was giving birth to one who would be the cause of such distress - perhaps she too would have chosen bareness?

Or think about the mother of Robert Steinhauser - if she could have known what her son would do, would she have preferred bareness? It was Robert who took two guns into his grammar school, went into the men's room to change into a black outfit with a Ninja-style face mask, and then proceeded to callously murder 13 teachers, a police officer and at least two children before killing himself in a storeroom where he had been shoved by a heroic teacher. We didn't hear much about 19 year old Robert because the school was in Germany.

No conscientious mother will ever say the words out loud, "I wish you were never born." But when one's son or daughter causes death and grief for other mothers, the feeling of preferring bareness may arise.

2. Weep because people will hide under the hills.

This reminds us of what took place in the country of Afghanistan when men hid themselves in the caves as precisely guided missiles rained bombs on their exact locations.

What Jesus said sounds much like what was prophesied of Israel because of the idolatry. ("The high places also of Aven, the sin of Israel, shall be destroyed the thorn and the thistle shall come up on their altars; and they shall say to the mountains, Cover us; and to the hills, Fall on us." - Hosea 10:8)

What is interesting is that hills and mountains were considered to be the dwelling places of the gods, but the gods (idols) have failed to deliver protection so that the only thing left is the hills.

When Jesus spoke to the "daughters of Jerusalem," He was prophesying that the time would come when circumstances would be so bad that men would seek to bury themselves under the mountains.

3. Weep because the lot of the dry will be far worse than that of the green tree.

This is the most difficult part of this passage for us to understand. What is the green tree, and what is the dry?

It is apparent that Jesus is quoting a familiar proverb of His day. A live green tree is the picture of a good man; a wicked man is likened to a dry dead one. Jesus then would be the green tree. As Albert Barnes has explained, "If they, the Romans, do these things to me, who am innocent and blameless; if they punish me in this manner in the face of justice, what will they not do in relation to this guilty nation? What desolations and woes may not be expected when injustice and oppression have taken the place of justice, and have set up a rule over this wicked people?"

To say it another way, if such distress as that of crucifixion would come upon One who was perfectly innocent, what would be the distress which, under the just indignation of God, would come upon those who were so exceedingly wicked as to murder his beloved Son?

Conclusion:

Put all together, Jesus called upon the Daughters of Jerusalem to weep because of the terrible calamity which would soon come upon them, their children and their city. His prophetic promise was fulfilled a scant 40 years later when the Roman General (later to become Emperor) Titus would siege and then destroy the city.

Josephus was the preeminent historian of his day, and provides us with a very graphic description of the siege of Jerusalem.

"It was now a miserable case . . . for what was otherwise worthy of reverence was in this case despised; insomuch that children pulled the very morsels that their fathers were eating out of their very mouths, and what was still more to be pitied, so did the mothers do as to their infants. . . .

"When [the seditious] saw any house shut up, this was to them a signal that the people within had gotten some food; whereupon they broke open the doors, and ran in, and took pieces of what they were eating almost up out of their very throats, and this by force: the old men, who held their food fast, were beaten; and if the women hid what they had within their hands, their hair was torn for so doing; nor was there any commiseration shown either to the aged or to the infants, but they lifted up children from the ground as they hung upon the morsels they had gotten, and shook them down upon the floor.

"They also invented terrible methods of torments to discover where any food was . . . and a man was forced to bear what it is terrible even to hear, in order to make him confess that he had but one loaf of bread, or that he might discover a handful of barley-meal that was concealed; and this was done when these tormentors were not themselves hungry; for the thing had been less barbarous had necessity forced them to it; but this was done to keep their madness in exercise, and as making preparation of provisions for themselves for the following days." (Wars, Chapter 10:3)

"Many were captured by the Romans and ". . . first whipped, and then tormented with all sorts of tortures, before they died, and were then crucified before the wall of the city. So the soldiers, out of the wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest. . . . " (Chapter 11:1)

"Then did the famine widen its progress, and devoured the people by whole houses and families; the upper rooms were full of women and children that were dying by famine, and the lanes of the city were full of the dead bodies of the aged; the children also and the young men wandered about the market-places like shadows, all swelled with the famine, and fell down dead, wheresoever their misery seized them.

"As for burying them, those that were sick themselves were not able to do it; and those that were hearty and well were deterred from doing it by the great multitude of those dead bodies. Nor was there any lamentations made under these calamities, nor were heard any mournful complaints; but the famine confounded all natural passions; for those who were just going to die looked upon those that were gone to rest before them with dry eyes and open mouths. Now every one of these died with their eyes fixed upon the temple. . . . At first [orders were given] that the dead should be buried out of the public treasury, as not enduring the stench of their dead bodies. But afterwards, when they could not do that, they had them cast down from the walls into the valleys beneath." (Chapter 12:3)

But our closing question is, where does this Scripture fit in for us?

To be sure, there is yet coming another day when such conditions will once again be present. Only then it will not be the judgment of the Romans, nor of any other conquering army - it will be the judgment of God Himself. For this cause, when Jesus was crucified, He already took this judgment of God so that those who put their trust in Him would be spared.

So rather than pitying Him, we look to Him for our salvation.