Jeremiah 6:17

"And I set watchmen over you saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet; but they said, We will not hearken. Therefore hear, ye nations, and know, O congregation, what is among them. Hear, O earth; behold, I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto my words; and as for my law, they have rejected it."

"We will not hearken ..." (Jeremiah 6:17). One needs to read this with the similar response in the preceding verse, where Israel rejected God's invitation to walk in the good way, saying, "We will not walk therein." The meaning is simply that the Chosen People had lost all desire to continue in the favor of God.

"Hear, ye nations, Hear O earth ..." (Jeremiah 6:18-19). This solemn invitation to the whole Gentile world, as well as the whole earth itself to hear what God will do is such an introduction that requires a special understanding of God's promise here to "bring evil upon this people." The Dean of Canterbury, quoting Cyprian, stated that: "A decree so solemnly proclaimed can be of no light importance; and therefore the Fathers (the Ante-Nicenes) not without reason understood it as referring to the rejection of the Jews from being God's Church."[14] This is a profoundly true observation, provided only that it should be understood as a removal only of the racial angle of God's favor to Israel. After the captivity of the Jews, the racial Israel never again enjoyed the status of being the wife of God. All of the promises to Abraham would afterward be fulfilled in the New Israel, which is Christ; but no Jew was ever rejected because of his race; but at the same time, he would never again be automatically a member of the true Israel on account of his race.