- God proclaims that there will come a time when the bones of all the unrighteous dead—kings, priests, officials, prophets, and average citizens—will be dug up and spread around under the open sky.
- This is because the people worshipped the host of heaven, the different gods located in the sky, like the sun and moon and the planets and stars, instead of Israel's God.
- Those who are still alive will wish they were dead.
- God tells Jeremiah to ask the people why they won't pick themselves up again once they've fallen. They keep sliding backwards and never do anything constructive to better themselves.
- None of the people get back on course, which even birds know how to do.
- The so-called wise people aren't really wise, because they don't know what they're talking about.
- The people have pretended that peace would come, when there was never any peace to begin with.
- Jeremiah says that the best that people can do is retreat into the fortified cities. It's gonna be a time of big-time terror and wrath.
- The land quakes at the noise of Babylonian stallions. God says he's sending serpents to bite his people.
- Jeremiah feels sorry for the people of Judah. They can't understand why God is punishing them.
- Jeremiah bemoans the fact that there's no spiritual physician or "balm in Gilead" that can restore his people to a state of goodness. He's crying his eyes out over all this.