And wherever I have banished them, the remnant of this evil family will choose death over life,” declares the LORD of Hosts.
He intimates in this verse, that all survivors would be doubly miserable, as it would be better for them to die at once than to pine away in unceasing evils: for they who give another meaning to the words, seem not to understand the design of the Prophet.
These verses might fitly have been joined to the close of the foregoing chapter, as giving a further description of the dreadful desolation which the army of the Chaldeans should make in the land. It shall strangely alter the property of death itself, and for the worse too. I. Death shall not now be, as it always used to be - the repose of the dead.
Commenting on Jeremiah 8:1-3
And death shall be chosen rather than life,.... By them that should be alive in those times, who would be carried captive into other lands, and be used very hardly, and suffer greatly, by the nations among whom they should dwell; see Rev 9:6.