Some divide Jeremiah 12 into three extracts Jeremiah 12:1-7, Jeremiah 12:14-17 from discourses of Jeremiah not preserved at length; others regard it as a connected discourse occasioned by a drought in the days of Josiah (compare Jeremiah 12:4); others see in the “evil neighbors” Jeremiah 12:14, an allusion to the bands of Syrians etc., who infested the land after Jehoiakim’s revolt from Nebuchadnezzar. More probably the outburst of expostulation Jeremiah 12:1-4 was occasioned by the plot of the men of Anathoth, and upon it the rest follows naturally.