For thus saith the LORD of hosts; As I thought to punish you, when your fathers provoked me to wrath, saith the LORD of hosts, and I repented not:
Ver. 14. As I thought to punish you] He had promised to make them of a curse a blessing, and here he shows them the cause of this change, namely, God's better thoughts of them, and toward them, upon their return unto him. And because they might haply think that their fathers had hard measure, he tells them that their punishment was the fruit of their provocations. And whereas they might expect that God should repent and relent toward them, he shows here that he had repented so long, that he was even weary with repenting, Jeremiah 15:6; and that he, therefore, was implacable because he found them incurable. Hence he resolved, as Ezekiel 24:13, and would not be altered, Crudelem medicum intemperans aeger facit A headstrong patient makes a cruel doctor. (Mimus). Lo, thus far these Jews had found and felt God's fingers; and that in his menaces he had been as good as his word.