Serving the Lord in Leytonstone, London
God is speaking to Judah through Jeremiah, but Judah isn’t listening. He has spoken of how their corpses will be exposed due to the shame of the child sacrifices they’ve been offering. They now turn that into an opportunity to worship the stars.
God is going to send Judah into exile under a foreign empire. Why would he cause such suffering? It’s because the people will not listen to him and that is exemplified in their sacrifices.
Jeremiah has been poetically announcing the coming invasion of Judah and the resulting fall of Jerusalem, at the hands of a terrible army from the north. Why is this happening? Because, like the human race as a whole, the city has become contaminated by sins like lying.
Through this short story, Jonah has shown himself unwilling to accept God on His own terms.