A grim irony. In me foreign land ye shall serve your idols to your hearts' content, day and night if ye will, "because, [not, where] I will not have mercy upon you" (by delivering you, and so calling you from your idols).
The text of these verses occurs in a more characteristic form and in a bettor connection in Jeremiah 23:7, Jeremiah 23:8. The connection here would be improved by insorting the passage before Jeremiah 23:18; and as displacements are not unfamiliar phenomena in manuscripts, this would not be a violent act. The difficulty is not m the therefore introducing the promise, which frequently occurs in prophecies immediately after threatenings (e.g. Isaiah 10:23, Isaiah 10:24), as if to say, "Things being in such a miserable plight, your God will interpose to help you;" but in the position of Jeremiah 23:18. How can the prophet say, "And first I will recompense their iniquity double," when Jeremiah 23:16, Jeremiah 23:17 contain a description of this very double recompense?
I will send for should rather be, I will send. Fishers and hunters, by a divinely given impulse, shall "fish" and "hunt" the unhappy fugitives from their lurking-places. There may, perhaps, be an allusion to the cruel ancient practice of "sweeping the country with a drag-net" (Herod, 3.149), and then destroying the male population: Samos, e.g. was thus "netted" and depopulated by the Persians. Habakkuk may also refer to this when he says (Habakkuk 1:15), "They catch them in their net, and gather them in their drag."