Jeremiah 5:7 Meaning How Can I Pardon You

Akataññutā: Ingratitude Ingratitude is the failure to hold in mind what one has been given. Being fed to the full is exactly the condition in which the one who filled the plate becomes invisible; the meal is eaten and the hand behind it goes unmentioned. Hunger remembers the giver and a full belly forgets him, which is why the complaint follows the feeding and not a famine.

Kāmataṇhā: Craving for sense pleasure Craving reaches for the next taste, sight and touch. Fed to the full, they went out anyway, because a full stomach settles nothing in the wanting; a fire given more wood burns wider, not lower. No amount of feeding was ever going to close that gap.

Micchādiṭṭhi: Wrong view Wrong view is a mistaken picture of how things stand. To swear by what are no gods is to lay the whole weight of an oath on something that cannot bear it, like signing a contract with a name that belongs to nobody. The oath felt binding to the men who swore it, and that is the trouble with a wrong view: it holds up fine until you lean on it.

Kāmesu micchācāra: Sexual misconduct Sexual misconduct is going after what is held by another's bond. The adultery and the forsaking are one act told twice, since the marriage tie is the picture Jeremiah keeps using for this people and their God. Each walk to that house is the covenant broken small, in a body, on an ordinary evening.

Pāpamittatā: Bad friendship Bad friendship is company that carries a person downhill. Assembling in troops explains the whole scene: alone a man hesitates at that door, and in a crowd nobody hesitates, each one's shame carried off by the man beside him. Sheep go through a gap in the fence one after another because the one ahead went.

Kamma: Action and its ripening Kamma is a deed together with the fruit it grows. "How can I pardon you" hangs in the air because deeds already done have begun their own ripening, the way a debt keeps its size whether or not the lender is angry. The next step is where things can turn: whoever stops walking to that street stops adding to what must come due.