A rude awakening awaits them. Once more will Iahvah interpose to save them from their infatuation. "This time" they shall be taught to know the nothingness of idols, not by the voice of prophetic pleadings, not by the fervid teachings of the Book of the Law, but by the sword of the enemy, by the rapine and ruin, in which the resistless might of Iahvah will be manifested against His rebellious people. Then, when the warnings which they have ridiculed find fearful accomplishment, then will they know that the name of the One God is IAHVAH--He Who alone was and is and shall be for evermore. In the shock of overthrow, in the sorrows of captivity, they will realize the enormity of assimilating the Supreme Source of events, the Fountain of all being and power, to the miserable phantoms of a darkened and perverted imagination. xvii. 1-18. Jeremiah, speaking for God, returns to the affirmation of Judah's guiltiness. He has answered the popular question (xvi. 10), so far as it implied that it was no mortal sin to associate the worship of alien gods with the worship of Iahvah. He now proceeds to answer it with an indignant contradiction, so far as it suggested that Judah was no longer guilty of the grossest forms of idolatry. 1 "The trespass of Judah," he affirms, "is written with pen of iron, with point of adamant; Graven upon the tablet of their heart, And upon the horns of their altars: Even as their sons remember their altars, And their sacred poles by the evergreen trees, Upon the high hills. 2 "O My mountain in the field! Thy wealth and all thy treasures will I give for a spoil, For the trespass of thine high-places in all thy borders. And thou shalt drop thine hand[70] from thy demesne which I gave thee; And I will enslave thee to thine enemies, In the land that thou knowest not; "For a fire have ye kindled in Mine anger; It shall burn for evermore."