Betraying the Covenant: At the heart of Jeremiah’s charge against Judah is the accusation that it has broken the covenant and now faces the impending implementation of the curses. In particular and most strikingly, it has broken the covenant by its worship of foreign gods as specified by the following oracle.

11:1–8 The Lord now instructs Jeremiah to accuse the people of Judah that they have broken the covenant. Prophets often functioned as lawyers of the covenant as God commissioned them to accuse his people of breaking the covenant by disobeying the laws of the covenant. Here Jeremiah is acting as a lawyer; elsewhere in the prophets we actually see the use of specifically legal or courtroom terminology in support of their task (e.g., Mic. 1:2; 6:1–8).

The covenant that is specifically in m…