Jeremiah 11:10 - Exposition

Their forefathers . The Hebrew has "their fathers, the former ones." The allusion is to the sins of the Israelites in the wilderness, and in Canaan under the judges. The prophets are constantly pointing their hearers back to those early times, either for warning (as here) or for encouragement ( Jeremiah 2:1 ; Hosea 2:15 ; Isaiah 1:26 ; Isaiah 63:11 , Isaiah 63:13 ). And they went after ; rather and they ( themselves ) have gone after . The pronoun is expressed in the Hebrew, to indicate that the prophet's contemporaries are now the subject.