How canst thou say...? — The prophet hears, as it were, the voice of the accused criminal, with its plea of “not guilty.” Had not the worship of Jehovah been restored by Josiah? Had he not, acting on Hilkiah’s counsels, suppressed Baal-worship (2 Kings 23:4-5; 2 Chronicles 34:4)? The answer to such pleas is to point to the rites that were still practised openly or in secret. In the “valley” of Ben-Hinnom, which Josiah had defiled (2 Kings 23:10), the horrid ritual of Molech (Leviticus 18:21; Leviticus 20:2) was still in use (Jeremiah 7:31), reviving, we may believe, on the death of Josiah; and this, though not actually the worship of Baal, was at least as evil, and probably, in the confluence of many forms of worship which marked the last days of the monarchy of Judah, was closely associated and practically identified with it, both by the prophet and the people (Jeremiah 19:5; Jeremiah 32:35).
A swift dromedary. — Better, she-camel, the Hebrew word not pointing to any specific difference. The words paint with an almost terrible vividness the eager, restless state of the daughter of Zion in its harlot-like lust for the false gods of the heathen. The female camel, in the uncontrollable violence of its brute passion, moving to and fro with panting eagerness — that was now the fit image for her who had once been the betrothed of Jehovah.