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The Reason for Judah's Rejection
v. 1. The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron, as with a stylus which was used for writing on wax tablets in ancient times, and with the point of a diamond, which was used for etching words into metal surfaces; it is graven upon the table of their heart, deep and ineradicable, with a lasting impression, and upon the horns of your altars, where they wrote the names of their idols,
v. 2. whilst their children, the entire nation, remember their altars and their groves by the green trees upon the high hills, that is, they were so deeply steeped in idolatry that the mere sight of a green tree and of a high hill awoke in them the remembrance of those terrible altars and of the Asherah images which they had erected there.
v. 3. O my mountain in the field, Jerusalem, and especially Zion and the Temple, I will give thy substance and all thy treasures to the spoil, into the possession of the enemies, and thy high places for sin, on account of the wickedness of the people, because they had been used for idolatrous sacrifices, throughout all thy borders.
v. 4. And thou, even thyself, shall discontinue from thine heritage that I gave thee, disowned, cast out of their land; and I will cause thee to serve thine enemies in the land which thou knowest not; for ye have kindled a fire in Mine anger which shall burn forever. Thus the Jews would lose their inheritance by their own fault, and those who persisted in their godless ways would be subject to the eternal wrath of a holy God, in the same way in which the idolaters of our days will experience it.