NOTES for Jer 13:1-27
The Lord compares the people He drew near to Himself to a belt fitting as closely as possible to the body. But now the belt has rotted; there is only one road for it, to the trash heap. The people have rotted too: the sins that soaked through them have made them good for nothing. Alas, the people do not want to admit that in their present condition they are good for nothing and must share the fate of old rags.
How can the rejection of the sinful people spoken of here be reconciled with the idea of the Lord's mercy, long-suffering, and forgiveness, spoken of on many other pages of the same Scripture? Is there a contradiction here? If one wishes, of course, such different words can be considered contradictory, but it is better to call them complementary. After all, to truly value forgiveness, one must fully feel the vileness of sin and see what it brings with it.
The Lord still spares us; He does not even show us in full the whole horror of the abyss into which we can sink, carried along by the weight of our sins. And it is not the Lord who pushes us there; He constantly warns us about the dangers of crooked paths. In His stern warnings, His love for us appears far more strongly than in sugary permissiveness. But again and again we keep trying to turn into some swamp...