37 Every head is shaved and every beard cut off; every hand is slashed and every waist is covered with sackcloth.
37 "For every head is shaved and every beard cut off. On all the hands are gashes, and around the waist is sackcloth.
37 "Everywhere you look are signs of mourning: heads shaved, beards cut, Hands scratched and bleeding, clothes ripped and torn.
37 "For every head shall be bald, and every beard clipped; On all the hands shall be cuts, and on the loins sackcloth--
37 The people shave their heads and beards in mourning. They slash their hands and put on clothes made of burlap.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Jeremiah 48:37
Commentary on Jeremiah 48:14-47
(Read Jeremiah 48:14-47)
The destruction of Moab is further prophesied, to awaken them by national repentance and reformation to prevent the trouble, or by a personal repentance and reformation to prepare for it. In reading this long roll of threatenings, and mediating on the terror, it will be of more use to us to keep in view the power of God's anger and the terror of his judgments, and to have our hearts possessed with a holy awe of God and of his wrath, than to search into all the figures and expressions here used. Yet it is not perpetual destruction. The chapter ends with a promise of their return out of captivity in the latter days. Even with Moabites God will not contend for ever, nor be always wroth. The Jews refer it to the days of the Messiah; then the captives of the Gentiles, under the yoke of sin and Satan, shall be brought back by Divine grace, which shall make them free indeed.