Jeremiah 9:2

"Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people and go from them! for they are all adulterers, an assembly of treacherous men. And they bend their tongue, as it were their bow, for falsehood; and they are grown strong in the land, but not for truth: for they proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith Jehovah."

"The blatant sins Jeremiah described here are literal; society was shot through and through with wickedness. The first sin mentioned in this indictment was universal adultery. This is called `spiritual adultery,' or the worshipping of idols; but in that worship gross immoralities were practiced."[3]

The speech of the people was loaded with falsehood, slander, and every evil; and Jeremiah here used the metaphor of a bow with arrows to describe it. The bow and arrow, of course, were weapons of warfare in that age. As Keil noted, "It was neither the tongue nor the bow which was lying, but that false speech which they shot with their tongue, as with a bow."[4]

There existed in that society at that time, "An utter want of upright dealing between man and man."[5]