Matthew Poole and continuators on Jeremiah 5:19

19 ¶ And it shall come to pass when ye shall say , Wherefore doth the LORD our God all these things unto us? then shalt thou answer them, Like as ye have forsaken me, and served strange gods in your land, so shall ye serve strangers in a land, that is not yours.

This speaks, either their unparallel'd insolency, in a manner challenging God, as if they had not deserved such dealing at his hands, they might have expected better usage from him; the Iewes were good at these kinds of challenging of God, Isa. 58.3. Or gross stupidity, as being such sots as not to be sensible of what they had done to provoke him; like to that chap. 16.10.

Heb. Gods of the stranger; he doth not say strange gods, but gods of the stranger, which aggravated their crime, that while they lived in their own land, and the true God among them, they would precariously go fetch in gods from the Heathens.

Here the Prophet 1. opposeth strange Lords to rule over them, to those strange gods, that they had served, which God calls a forsaking of him 2. He opposes a land not theirs, to their own land; so that by this the Prophet shews what resentments God had of their sin, for it implies that their sin was much greater, that they served strange gods in their own land, than if they had done it in another, under the Tyrannical imposition of a stranger, and therefore he would accordingly suit their punishment, that they should serve in a strange land, which should be worse, then to be servants in their own. This is a dreadful but a just Retaliation.

Marginal references: chap. 13.2[illegible: 1 letter]. & 16.10.