10:17 Jeremiah called those living during the siege of Jerusalem to pack their bags. He often warned his hearers of the coming invasion by speaking as if the enemy was attacking. Consequently it is very difficult, if not impossible, to date these prophecies unless they contain a more specific indication of their historical origin.
10:18 The Lord had announced that He was going to send Jerusalem's citizens away soon, as a shepherd throws a stone out of his sling. This would be a very distressing experience for them, but it would bring them to their senses.
10:19 The people, for whom the prophet spoke, bewailed their calamity viewing it as an incurable injury that the Lord had inflicted on them. Yet they realized that there was no escape from it and they had to endure the experience.
10:20 Their homes lay in ruins, and there was no one to help them rebuild them. Jerusalem, as a pitiful tent-dwelling mother, had lost her home and her children.
10:21 Israel's leaders, political and spiritual, had foolishly forsaken the Lord and His covenant, so they became failures and their people scattered like sheep (cf. Ezek. 34).
10:22 The report of a great commotion in the north had reached Jerusalem. An invader was coming who threatened to destroy the towns of Judah so thoroughly that only jackals (or wolves) would inhabit them.
"There is not a single known case where a town of Judah proper was continuously occupied through the exilic period."213
In view of the coming invasion, Jeremiah prayed to Yahweh. Earlier God had told him not to pray that He would stop the invasion (7:16; cf. 11:14; 14:11-12). But here the prophet did not pray for that but for God to correct him (and Judah) and to judge the nations.
10:23 The prophet confessed that people do not have the wisdom to direct their own steps in safe and successful paths (cf. Ps. 37:23; Prov. 3:5-6; 16:9; 20:24).
10:24 He invited the Lord to correct him, to lead him in the proper way, but to do it with justice (without undue severity). If the Lord corrected him in anger, as the prophet (and his people) deserved, he would die. Jeremiah was probably speaking for his people as well as for himself in this prayer.
10:25 The Lord's anger should find its object in the nations that did not know Him and did not pray to Him but devoured, consumed, and desolated God's people, despicable as the Judeans were (cf. Ps. 79:6-7).
