29 "What do you have against me, running off to assert your 'independence'?" God's Decree. 30 "I've wasted my time trying to train your children. They've paid no attention to me, ignored my discipline. And you've gotten rid of your God-messengers, treating them like dirt and sweeping them away. 31 "What a generation you turned out to be! Didn't I tell you? Didn't I warn you? Have I let you down, Israel? Am I nothing but a dead-end street? Why do my people say, 'Good riddance! From now on we're on our own'? 32 Young women don't forget their jewelry, do they? Brides don't show up without their veils, do they? But my people forget me. Day after day after day they never give me a thought. 33 "What an impressive start you made to get the most out of life. You founded schools of sin, taught graduate courses in evil! 34 And now you're sending out graduates, resplendent in cap and gown - except the gowns are stained with the blood of your victims! All that blood convicts you. You cut and hurt a lot of people to get where you are. 35 And yet you have the gall to say, 'I've done nothing wrong. God doesn't mind. He hasn't punished me, has he?' Don't look now, but judgment's on the way, aimed at you who say, 'I've done nothing wrong.' 36 "You think it's just a small thing, don't you, to try out another sin-project when the first one fails? But Egypt will leave you in the lurch the same way that Assyria did. 37 You're going to walk away from there wringing your hands. I, God, have blacklisted those you trusted. You'll get not a lick of help from them."
Matthew Henry's Commentary on Jeremiah 2:29-37
Commentary on Jeremiah 2:29-37
(Read Jeremiah 2:29-37)
The nation had not been wrought upon by the judgements of God, but sought to justify themselves. The world is, to those who make it their home and their portion, a wilderness and a land of darkness; but those who dwell in God, have the lines fallen to them in pleasant places. Here is the language of presumptuous sinners. The Jews had long thrown off serious thoughts of God. How many days of our lives pass without suitable remembrance of him! The Lord was displeased with their confidences, and would not prosper them therein. Men employ all their ingenuity, but cannot find happiness in the way of sin, or excuse for it. They may shift from one sin to another, but none ever hardened himself against God, or turned from him, and prospered.