Jeremiah 9:14

14 Instead they lived any way they wanted and took up with the Baal gods, who they thought would give them what they wanted - following the example of their parents."

Jeremiah 9:14 Meaning and Commentary

Jeremiah 9:14

But have walked after the imagination of their own heart
What their own hearts devised, chose, and were best pleased with; (See Gill on Jeremiah 7:24), and after Baalim;
the idols of the Gentiles; these they served and worshipped, and not the true God: which their fathers taught them;
which was so far from excusing them, that it was an aggravation of their sin, that they had continued in their wicked ways and idolatrous practices, from age to age, from one generation to another. This then was the cause of their calamity and destruction; they had forsaken the law of the Lord, and had broken that; they had chose their own ways, and had been guilty of idolatrous practices time out of mind; wherefore the Lord had shown much longsuffering and patience with them, and would now no longer forbear he was just and righteous in his doings.

Jeremiah 9:14 In-Context

12 I asked, "Is there anyone around bright enough to tell us what's going on here? Anyone who has the inside story from God and can let us in on it? "Why is the country wasted? "Why no travelers in this desert?"

13 God's answer: "Because they abandoned my plain teaching. They wouldn't listen to anything I said, refused to live the way I told them to.

14 Instead they lived any way they wanted and took up with the Baal gods, who they thought would give them what they wanted - following the example of their parents."

15 And this is the consequence. God-of-the-Angel-Armies says so: "I'll feed them with pig slop. "I'll give them poison to drink.

16 "Then I'll scatter them far and wide among godless peoples that neither they nor their parents have ever heard of, and I'll send Death in pursuit until there's nothing left of them." A Life That Is All Outside but No Inside