Jeremiah 9:17
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: 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:
The mourning women and the cunning women are professional mourners, skilled women singers summoned to come and perform lamentation. Their calling is to lament, to voice grief with practiced skill when they are called for. The summons belongs to Jeremiah's warning of judgment against Israel for its idolatry and sin. That warning announces swift punishment to come through Babylon, and the call for mourners signals the great coming grief and calamity described in the chapter.
The verse pictures public, intense mourning. It raises the question whether coldness, division, and desolation in the church should be answered with loud, bodily displays of grief. Hiring mourners for a funeral illustrates paying people to put on a show of religion when their actions do not spring from conviction.