A Call to Turn Meets Planned Refusal

The potter lesson is applied, and the people choose their own plans

Now therefore go to, speak to the men of Judah, and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the LORD; Behold, I frame evil against you, and devise a device against you: return ye now every one from his evil way, and make your ways and your doings good. And they said, There is no hope: but we will walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his evil heart.

The refusal report does not justify fatalism, coercion, or assuming a resistant audience proves a speaker correct. 'There is no hope' is their chosen slogan, not a truth you must accept, and not a license to force them.

Lebanon snow and cold streams expose an unnatural exchange

Therefore thus saith the LORD; Ask ye now among the heathen, who hath heard such things: the virgin of Israel hath done a very horrible thing. Will a man leave the snow of Lebanon which cometh from the rock of the field? or shall the cold flowing waters that come from another place be forsaken? Because my people hath forgotten me, they have burned incense to vanity, and they have caused them to stumble in their ways from the ancient paths, to walk in paths, in a way not cast up; To make their land desolate, and a perpetual hissing; every one that passeth thereby shall be astonished, and wag his head. I will scatter them as with an east wind before the enemy; I will shew them the back, and not the face, in the day of their calamity.

Leaving snow-water for vanity is the horror. Ancient paths here are the good ways already defined, not nostalgia. Virgin-of-Israel language must not shame women. East wind and averted face are judgment, not a cue to scatter a people yourself.