John Gill, on Jer 8:17

“For behold I will send among you serpents, basilisks, against which there is no charm: and they shall bite you, saith the Lord.”

“When I would comfort myself against terror,.... Either naturally, by eating and drinking, the necessary and lawful means of refreshment; or spiritually, by reading the word of God, and looking over the promises in it: my heart is faint in me; at the consideration of the calamities which were coming upon his people, and which were made known to him by a spirit of prophecy, of which he had no room to doubt. So the Targum takes them to be the words of the prophet, paraphrasing them, "for them, saith the prophet, my heart grieves.''”

Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.