Jeremiah 2:31

(Verse 31.) See the word of the Lord: Am I become a wilderness to Israel, or a barren land? Why then said my people, We are gone, we will come no more at you? LXX: Hear the word of the Lord: thus says the Lord: Am I become a wilderness to Israel, or a land full of darkness? Why do my people say, We will not serve, we will not come to you? And Moses saw the voice of God (Exod. XXXIII), and John the Apostle says that he has seen and touched the word of God (I John I). But he wonders how the people of Israel had treated God as if it were a wilderness, when they followed idols as if they were the bustling city. It is a late land, which does not receive the showers of teachings, nor the discipline of the Gospel; and it is full of thorns, because it had not been cultivated. Therefore, the once people of God are more wicked in that they have turned away from the Lord and do not want to return to their Lord anymore. It is a great offense not to seek to appease the one you have offended.

At the beginning of what has been read, the Lord says concerning Israel that he did not become a "wilderness" to him, nor "a parched land." Who then, coming to this passage, would not inquire, examining the intention of what is written? Grant that God did not become a wilderness in Israel, that he did not become in Israel a parched land: has the Lord then become a wilderness to Israel today, or is he now to him a parched land? And what of this: when to Israel he was neither a wilderness nor a parched land, was he to the nations a wilderness and a parched land? For if to all he is always not a wilderness, and to all he is always not a parched land, what need was there for it to be said to Israel in particular and by way of exception, "Have I become a wilderness to the house of Israel, or a parched land?" But it is possible to come first to the universal benefactions of God, and then, after his universal benefactions, to the particular ones. To no one is God a wilderness, "making his sun to rise upon the wicked and" — and to no one is he a parched land, "sending rain upon" the just "and the unjust." How is he a wilderness, who makes the day to rise and the night for rest? How is he a wilderness, who makes the earth to bear fruit? How is he a wilderness, who administers each person according to the soul, that it may be rational, that it may take up knowledge, that its faculty of understanding may be trained with respect to the body, that it may have "the organs of perception" in vigor? Therefore, as regards the universal account, God is a wilderness to no one. But as regards the particular account, I come to the affairs of Israel and say: he was neither a wilderness nor a parched land, when in Egypt he was working the signs and the wonders for the people. But if there was any time when they were forsaken, he became, as it were, a wilderness to them — though he himself was not a wilderness. When, however, to Israel he was not a wilderness nor a parched land, to the nations, according to the particular account, he was a wilderness and a parched land. But when he turned away from Israel and became to that Israel a wilderness and a parched land, then the grace was poured out upon the nations, and Christ Jesus has now become to us not a wilderness but full, and not a parched land but bearing fruit; for "many are the children of the desolate one, more than of her…