Jeremiah 14:13 - Exposition

"Pleading with Providence, the good prophet lays the blame on ill teaching, but the stern answer ( Jeremiah 14:14 ), admitting the plea as true, rejects it as inadequate ( Jeremiah 14:14 ), and denounces sorrows which ( Jeremiah 14:17-22 ) the prophet passionately deprecates" (Rowland Williams). Ah, Lord God! rather, Alas! O Lord Jehovah (see on Jeremiah 1:6 ). The prophets say unto them . The greater part of the prophetic order had not kept pace with its more spiritual members (Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc.). They still traded on those natural gifts of divination ( Micah 3:6 ) which were, no doubt, where genuine, of Divine origin, but which, even then, needed to be supple-merited and controlled by a special impulse from the Spirit of holiness. Jeremiah, however, declares, on the authority of a revelation, that these prophets did not divine by any God-given faculty, but "the deceit of their own heart" (Verse 14). The Deuteronomic Torah , discovered after a period of concealment at the outset of Jeremiah's ministry, energetically forbids the practice of the art of divination ( Deuteronomy 18:10 ).