Jeremiah 44:8-10

Ye provoke me unto wrath with the works of your hands By making and setting up idols to worship. That ye might cut yourselves off, &c. This is not to be so taken as if they did these things with a design to cut off themselves and their posterity: but only as signifying that their utter ruin would be the certain consequence of their continuing so to act. Have ye forgotten the wickedness of your fathers? &c. Have you forgotten what great wickedness your fathers committed, and what great punishments were in consequence thereof inflicted upon them? We may be truly said to have forgotten that the sight of which, or reflection thereon, makes no such impression upon us as produces a suitable practice. Which they have committed in the land of Judah, &c. To have practised these things in any place would have been to contract great guilt; but to have done them in the land of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, in the valley of vision, and in the holy city, where there were such means of information and such helps to piety, was still more aggravated and inexcusable wickedness. They are not humbled even unto this day Neither they nor you are yet properly humbled, and prepared for receiving mercy. Neither have they feared, nor walked in my law Hence we learn, that reformation and obedience are the proper fruit of true contrition and humiliation; God does not account those to be humbled, but hardened, who are not reformed and made obedient, let their pretended contrition or humiliation be, in outward appearance, what it may.