Jeremiah 17:1,2 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron Many of the Jews, though living in the habitual commission of the grossest crimes, were, nevertheless, self-righteous, and thought they did not deserve that God should enter into judgment with them in any such way as Jeremiah foretold he would do. Wherefore, said they, hath the Lord pronounced all this great evil against us? What is our iniquity? What is our sin? chap. Jeremiah 16:10. Here the prophet tells them their sin was too plain to be denied, and too bad to be excused: that it was written in indelible characters, not only before God, to whose omniscience it lay continually open, but in their own hearts and consciences; as if written with a pen of iron, or an engraving instrument, or the point of a diamond; instruments employed to make durable inscriptions on hard substances. As if he had said, Their sins are as manifest, and the remembrance of them as durable, as the memorable actions which have been engraven on pillars of stone, or tablets of brass, to give them notoriety, and preserve them from oblivion. The expression, it is graven upon the table of their hearts, may also be intended to signify the rooted affection which they had to sin, especially to the sin of idolatry; that it was woven into their very nature, and was as dear to them as that is to us, of which we say, It is engraven on our hearts. In like manner, their idolatrous altars and other monuments of their heathenish superstitions, were undeniable tokens of the corrupt inclinations of their hearts, which were altogether estranged from God and his true worship. Or their sin might be said to be engraven on the horns of their altars, because the blood of the sacrifices which they offered to their idols was sprinkled there, or because their altars had some inscription upon them, declaring to what idol each altar was consecrated. Whilst their children remember their altars This shows how inveterate they were in this sin of idolatry, that they taught it to their children.