This is how far it has gone, and we can see this in our own society. You mention the Word of God to a good percentage of the people of this nation, and they want to fight with you or they are offended that you would bring God into the discussion. He says here at the end of verse 10,
You can understand after reading this why I say He has had it up to here. He is telling them, "Oh boy, you people are going to get it. I can't hold back any longer. You're going to fall. You're going to die. You're going to be at the spearhead, the wrong side of the spearhead, of My wrath." So, He promises them death and destruction for their covetousness, their deceit, and their idolatry. They are going to face the wrath of God.
Now in verse 14—I am narrowing my focus here to this verse—He speaks directly to the priests and the prophets. He singles them out for their spectacular ineffectiveness. Their jobs included helping to turn the people back to God and giving honest evaluations, objective evaluations of the seriousness of the coming wrath of God.
He wanted them to be able to see the signs of the times, to hear the words that He was giving them, and pass them on to let them know just how angry He was, but yet how He would give mercy if they turned back to Him. But instead, they comforted the people with their cries of "Peace, peace!" when it would have been better in the long run, it would have been better for more people had they aroused those people to repentance for their deep sinfulness. But instead they mollified the people and basically told them, maybe not explicitly but in the way they were speaking, to "go about your business, it's not going to be all that bad. Don't worry, God is merciful."
But notice that at that time when things were pretty much the absolute worst, you had the prophets and the priests, those who are supposed to be on top of things and telling the people what they need to do—they needed to turn back to God, they needed to stop sinning, they needed to renew the covenant, get back to it—they were saying, "Hey, peace! Things are going to be okay. Things are not as bad as you think they are." So they would say this peace, peace, and it was a lie. There was no peace. There was no peace externally or internally. But they tried to soothe and calm everybody, and then what do you know? The Babylonians came. And then there was certainly no peace.
But you have these people in the pulpits trying to put a band-aid on a gaping wound and it was not working. It only helped slightly, but it certainly was not giving the people a realistic look of what was actually going on.
