Jeremiah 16:4

(4) Of grievous deaths.—Literally, deaths from diseases, including, perhaps, famine (as in Jeremiah 14:18), as contrasted with the more immediate work of the sword.

They shall not be lamented.—Among a people who attached such importance to the due observance of funeral obsequies as the Jews did, the neglect of those obsequies was, of course, here, as in Jeremiah 22:18, a symptom of extremest misery. Like features have presented themselves in the pestilences or sieges of other cities and other times, as in the description in Lucretius (vi. 1278) :—

“Nec mos ille sepulturæ remanebat in urbe,Quo pius hic populus semper consuerat humari.”“No more the customed rites of sepultureWere practised in the city, such as wontOf old to tend the dead with reverent care.”

Compare the account of the plague at Athens in Thucydides (ii. 52).