Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

This section Jeremiah 17:1-4 is inseparably connected with the preceding. Judah’s sin had been described Jeremiah 16:19 as one of which the very Gentiles will become ashamed. and for which she will shortly be punished by, an intervention of God’s hand more marked than anything in her previous history. Jeremiah now dwells upon the indelible nature of her sin.

A pen of iron - i. e., an iron chisel for cutting inscriptions upon tables of stone.

The point of a diamond - The ancients were well acquainted with the cutting powers of the diamond.

Altars - Not Yahweh’s one altar, but the many altars which the Jews had set up to Baalim Jeremiah 11:13. Though Josiah had purged the land of these, yet in the eleven years of Jehoiakim’s reign they had multiplied again, and were the external proofs of Judah’s idolatry, as the table of her heart was the internal witness.

While their children remember their altars - Perhaps an allusion to their sacrifices of children to Moloch. Present perhaps at some such blood-stained rite, its horrors would be engraven forever upon the memory.

Groves - “Asherahs,” i. e., wooden images of Astarte (see Exodus 34:13 note).

O my mountain in the field - i. e., Jerusalem or Zion, called the Rock of the Plain in Jeremiah 21:13. “The field” is the open unenclosed country, here contrasted with the privileged height of Zion.

Or sin - i. e., because of thy sin.

The verb rendered “discontinue” is that used of letting the land rest Exodus 23:11, and of releasing creditors Deuteronomy 15:2 in the sabbatical year. As Judah had not kept these sabbatical years she must now discontinue the tillage of God’s inheritance until the land had had its rest. “Even thyself may mean and that through thyself,” through thine own fault.

Confounded - Put to shame.

Destroy them ... - Rather, break them with a double breaking: a twofold punishment, the first their general share in the miseries attendant upon their country’s fall; the second, a special punishment for their sin in persecuting and mocking God’s prophet.

Upon disobedience follows the anger of God, which will consume like a fire all the, splendor of the offending city.