NOTES for Jer 4:1-31
Again and again, alongside the description of what humanity will have to taste for its outrages, a warning is given from above: many disasters can be avoided if evil deeds are cast aside in time. Conversion is compared here with circumcision, but it is hearts that are to be circumcised. This call emphasizes that it is meaningless to observe rites while forgetting their content and turning them into an empty formality. The visible must be filled with the invisible, the external with the internal. God does not need hypocritical piety; for that matter, people have no use for it either.
The prophecy that the earth will be laid waste should not surprise us, for it is impossible to torment it by our actions with impunity. Even today, when people speak of an approaching ecological catastrophe, they habitually consider any number of economic and nature-forming factors, anything except raising the question of the consequences of violating spiritual and moral laws. Humanity does not want to reject needs that have become habitual and are often sinful. Meanwhile the consequences of sins can turn out to be completely unexpected for those who are used to looking at things in a strictly rational way.
But the Lord promised not to make a complete destruction of what is on the earth. Those who, when reading the stern pages of the Old Testament, make a hasty conclusion about God's lack of mercy should think about something else: we human beings have many times been able to destroy both ourselves and the whole world around us, but even today we are alive thanks to the One who keeps us from our own foolishness. This fact alone speaks of His mercy.