(17) Because I have spoken unto them, but they have not heard.--The prophet in part reproduces his own earlier complaint from Jeremiah 7:13; Jeremiah 25:7, a complaint which has been the ever-recurring burden of all teachers of wisdom (Proverbs 1:24) and of all true prophets (Isaiah 65:12; Isaiah 66:4).

35:12-19 The trial of the Rechabites' constancy was for a sign; it made the disobedience of the Jews to God the more marked. The Rechabites were obedient to one who was but a man like themselves, and Jonadab never did for his seed what God has done for his people. Mercy is promised to the Rechabites. We are not told respecting the performance of this promise; but doubtless it was performed, and travellers say the Rechabites may be found a separate people to this day. Let us follow the counsels of our pious forefathers, and we shall find good in so doing.Therefore thus saith the Lord God of hosts, the God of Israel,.... Provoked by such ill usage:

behold, I will bring upon Judah, and upon all the inhabitants of Jerusalem, all the evil that I have pronounced against them: which Abarbinel interprets of all the threatenings and curses in the law and the prophets respecting the Jews, until the times of Jeremiah; though it may more especially intend the evil, God by him had pronounced upon them; namely, that the Chaldean army should come into their land, besiege Jerusalem, and take it, and carry captive its inhabitants:

because I have spoken unto them, but they have not heard; and I have called unto them, but they have not answered; he spoke to them by his prophets, he called to them in his providences, and took every method to warn them of their sin and danger, and bring them to repentance and reformation; but all to no purpose. The Targum is,

"because I sent unto them all my servants the prophets, but they obeyed not; and they prophesied to them, but they returned not.''