For this is what the LORD says: “The whole land will be desolate, but I will not finish its destruction.
The Prophet briefly explains here what he understood by the four things which he had seen and of which he had spoken. He then declares, as it were in the person of God, that there would be a dreadful desolation throughout Judea; Wasted, he says, shall be the whole land, or, in the whole land there shall be desolation.
The prophet is here in an agony, and cries out like one upon the rack of pain with some acute distemper, or as a woman in travail. The expressions are very pathetic and moving, enough to melt a heart of stone into compassion: My bowels! my bowels! I am pained at my very heart; and yet well, and in health himself, and nothing ails him.
Commenting on Jeremiah 4:19-31
For thus hath the Lord said,.... What follows is an explanation and confirmation of the above vision the prophet had: the whole land shall be desolate; as he had seen; it should not be manured, ploughed, and sown, or bring forth fruit; and should be without inhabitants, at least have very few: yet I will not make a full end; there should be some inhabitants...