Jeremiah 9:21
For death is come up into our windows, and is entered into our palaces, to cut off the children from without, and the young men from the streets. For death is come up into our windows, and is entered into our palaces, to cut off the children from without, and the young men from the streets.
In its setting the verse belongs to warnings that Israel's wilful sin would soon be punished by Babylon. It pictures death climbing up into windows and entering palaces to cut off children from without and young men from the streets, invading homes, even the greatest, and public life. That invasion marks a devastating crisis that calls for lamentation.
It shows sin's curse weighing on the atmosphere and filling it with disease that brings death into homes. The air was forfeited through human sin and placed under Satan's power so that it carries disease and death. In this way the cutting off of children and young men illustrates how disease threatens people in ordinary homes and streets.
It presents death as an enemy and its realm as the land of the enemy. Its reach explains lifelong bondage to fear of dying and of the dead, as seen among the Chinese people. It points to deliverance: Christ took human nature and through death destroys Satan's power over death to free those held by that fear. In the redemption of the dominion every trace of the curse will be removed from land, water, and air.