Futile Prayers
Jeremiah 11:14
Therefore pray not you for this people, neither lift up a cry or prayer for them…


It is futile to pray for those who have deliberately cast off the covenant of Jehovah and made a covenant with His adversary. Prayer cannot save, nothing can save, the impenitent; and there is a state of mind, in which one's own prayer is turned into sin; the state of mind in which a man prays, merely to appease God, and escape the fire, but without a thought of forsaking sin, without the faintest aspiration after holiness. There is a degree of guilt upon which sentence is already passed, which is "unto death," and for which prayer is interdicted alike by the prophet of the new and of the old covenant.

(C. J. Ball, M. A.)



Parallel Verses
KJV: Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up a cry or prayer for them: for I will not hear them in the time that they cry unto me for their trouble.

WEB: Therefore don't pray for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them; for I will not hear them in the time that they cry to me because of their trouble.




Spiritual Atavism; Or, the Sins of the Fathers
Top of Page
Top of Page