Jeremiah 13:27

"I have seen thine abominations, even thine adulteries, and thy neighings, the lewdness of thy whoredom, on the hills, in the field. Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem! Thou wilt not be made clean; how long shall it be?"

This is a further elaboration of the reasons why the dreadful punishment prescribed for Israel in the above verses was justified and appropriate.

"Thy neighings ..." (Jeremiah 13:27). Jeremiah mentioned this same thing back in Jeremiah 5:8 where he compared the behavior of the people to well-fed stallions, "everyone neighing to his neighbor's wife," indicating that they wanted a sexual experience with every woman in sight. The use of such a metaphor as this, as Robinson pointed out, most certainly indicates, "actual sexual immorality,"[11] which was so prominent a feature of the cultic worship of the Baalim.

"The tragic thing was that these same people frequented the temple, mouthing formulas like, `the temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh.' "[12]

"How long shall it yet be ..." (Jeremiah 13:27)? The actual meaning of these words is somewhat ambiguous. They may mean, "how long will it be before Jerusalem is cleansed?" or "how long will it be before the judgment of God falls upon her?" If Jeremiah still retained any hope of averting the terrible judgment which God through him had prophesied, the former meaning might be correct; but if he no longer supposed that Jerusalem would ever be cleansed, then the latter meaning is correct.

"Jeremiah lived to see the judgment fall; and after that, his hope rested upon the promise of a future day of restoration (Jeremiah 31:31-34),"[13] upon which occasion "all would know the Lord, from the least unto the greatest of the people," and when the sins of the people would be gloriously forgiven.

That occasion, of course, would be the coming of the Kingdom of Messiah; and we may not suppose that Jeremiah understood all the implications of the prophecies God gave to mankind through him.

This concludes the five warnings set forth in this chapter. If Israel ever made the slightest gesture toward heeding any of them, the sacred scriptures retain no record of such a thing.