18 Tell the king and the queen-mother, "Come down off your high horses. Your dazzling crowns will tumble off your heads." 19 The villages in the Negev will be surrounded, everyone trapped, And Judah dragged off to exile, the whole country dragged to oblivion. 20 Look, look, Jerusalem! Look at the enemies coming out of the north! What will become of your flocks of people, the beautiful flocks in your care? 21 How are you going to feel when the people you've played up to, looked up to all these years Now look down on you? You didn't expect this? Surprise! The pain of a woman having a baby!
22 Do I hear you saying, "What's going on here? Why me?" The answer's simple: You're guilty, hugely guilty. Your guilt has your life endangered, your guilt has you writhing in pain. 23 Can an African change skin? Can a leopard get rid of its spots? So what are the odds on you doing good, you who are so long-practiced in evil? 24 "I'll blow these people away - like wind-blown leaves. 25 You have it coming to you. I've measured it out precisely." God's Decree. "It's because you forgot me and embraced the Big Lie, that so-called god Baal. 26 I'm the one who will rip off your clothes, expose and shame you before the watching world. 27 Your obsessions with gods, gods, and more gods, your goddess affairs, your god-adulteries. Gods on the hills, gods in the fields - every time I look you're off with another god. O Jerusalem, what a sordid life! Is there any hope for you!"
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Jeremiah 13:18-27
Commentary on Jeremiah 13:18-27
(Read Jeremiah 13:18-27)
Here is a message sent to king Jehoiakim, and his queen. Their sorrows would be great indeed. Do they ask, Wherefore come these things upon us? Let them know, it is for their obstinacy in sin. We cannot alter the natural colour of the skin; and so is it morally impossible to reclaim and reform these people. Sin is the blackness of the soul; it is the discolouring of it; we were shapen in it, so that we cannot get clear of it by any power of our own. But Almighty grace is able to change the Ethiopian's skin. Neither natural depravity, nor strong habits of sin, form an obstacle to the working of God, the new-creating Spirit. The Lord asks of Jerusalem, whether she is determined not be made clean. If any poor slave of sin feels that he could as soon change his nature as master his headstrong lusts, let him not despair; for things impossible to men are possible with God. Let us then seek help from Him who is mighty to save.