Jeremiah 2:7

7. I brought you into a plentiful country The original is Carmel, ( כרמל ) garden land, as opposed to the “wilderness.” The fruits of this “Carmel” are enumerated in Deuteronomy 8:7-9; “a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and vines, and fig-trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive, and honey; a land wherein thou shalt eat bread without scarceness; thou shalt not lack any thing in it; a land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig brass.” In order rightly to appreciate this description we must bear in mind that its background is the peninsula of Sinai and the South Country, and also that the contrast was intensified and heightened by the hardships and privations of the forty years’ wandering in this region of silence and desolation. As the traveller of to-day emerges from the wilderness of the wandering into the land of promise he exchanges gloom, sterility, solitude, and monotony for beauty, variety, and the exhilaration of life.

Ye defiled my land It should have been, in all its length and breadth, a sanctuary; ye have made it an abomination. Its high hills have become altars of lust; its green trees coverts of uncleanness; and even its sacred temple is filled with pollutions.