In Jeremiah, chapter thirteen, verse twenty-two, “And if thou say in thine heart, Wherefore come these things upon me? For the greatness of thine iniquity are thy skirts discovered, and thy heels made bare.” When judgment came, the people had to know that it was happening to them because of their many sins; they were so accustomed to doing evil that they could not change.
“Are thy skirts discovered?” refers to women of rank in those days, the removal of which was a sign of extremest degradation. “Thy heels made bare” are made to walk barefoot, like lowly servants, possibly like an outcast harlot.
“And if thou say in thine heart, Wherefore come these things upon me?” Hypocrites will rarely confess their own shame and God’s righteousness, but are ready to express opposition, often by argument with God and inquire why He hath dealt so with them, as if He had treated them unjustly.
Sin is blackness of the soul. It is the discolouring of it, and we were shaped in it, so that we cannot get clear of it by any power of our own, as in Psalm fifty-one, verse five, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin mother conceive me.” Neither natural depravity nor strong habits of sin form an obstacle to the working of God, the new-creating Spirit. The Lord asks of Jerusalem whether she is determined not to be made clean. If any poor slave of sin feels that he could as soon change his nature as master his headstrong lusts, let him not despair; for things impossible to men are possible with God. Let us then seek help from Him who is might to save. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God,” as in Romans three, verse twenty-three.