Matthew Poole and continuators on Jeremiah 9:17

17 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; consider ye, and call for the mourning women, that they may come; and send for cunning women that they may come.

Either in how sad a condition you are, what circumstances you are under, or rather, bethink your selves what course to take, and therefore puts them upon mourning and bewailing their condition, intimated by the following expression.

A sort of Persons, and principally women, as more apt for Passions in this kind, which they had among them, 2 Chron. 35.25. whose work it was, either to compose Funeral Elegies, or Panegyricks in Praise of the dead and to act them in some mournful manner, as tearing their hair, and beating their breasts, with other mourning postures, or to sing them in some doleful tone, thereby artificially to provoke, and excite both Passions and expressions of Grief in the Friends of the Deceased, rather wringing out Tears, than shedding them, in which probably they made greater seeming Lamentations, than those that did really mourn, as being most concerned; not that God calls upon them to do this as approving the formality, (tho' this foolish Custom had obtained in most Ages and Countries) any more, than other Customs that were made use of by way of Illustration; as the Olimpick Games, and possibly that practice mentioned, 1 Cor. 15.29. but makes use of it, as being customary either to excite them to, and put them upon true Repentance, or to convince them hereby, that they were not able themselves sufficiently to bewail so great calamities as were coming upon them, intimating hereby that he would give them occasion for the most unfeigned weeping and Lamentation.

Such as are most skilful in it, Amos 5.16. Wisdom being taken for skil in any Arts as Exod. 31.3. and elsewhere.