6 For thus hath the LORD of hosts said, Hew ye down trees, and cast a mount against Jerusalem: this is the city to be visited; she is wholly oppression in the midst of her.
God invites us to knowledge also, when he says by Jeremiah, “If you had walked in the way of God, you would have dwelled forever in peace.” … God grants pardon to those who have erred. He says, “Turn, turn, as a grape gatherer returns to his basket.” Do you see the goodness of justice in that it advises us to repent? And through Jeremiah, he provides further enlightenment in the truth for those who have erred” “Thus says the Lord, stand in the roads, and look. Ask for the eternal paths of the Lord. Look for the good path, and walk in it, and you shall find purification for your souls.” He leads us to repentance in order to promote our salvation.
Behold the mercy and piety of the good God. When he wishes to be merciful, he says that he is displeased and angry. As he says through Jeremiah, “You will be chastised, Jerusalem, with pain and a scourge, lest my soul depart from you.” If you understand these words, it is the voice of God having compassion when he is angry, when he is jealous, when he brings pains and beatings. “For he scourges every one whom he receives.”
(Verse 6.) Because thus says the Lord of hosts: Cut down the wood (or its woods) and pour out (or carry) it around Jerusalem as a mound. Therefore, they say, we are confident of victory, because it is the command of the Lord who orders the Chaldeans: cut down the trees and carry them to build fortifications. By this it is shown that before the crown comes, the city is not immediately to be captured: but through a long siege, as we read later.
It was that you may learn that God silently and noiselessly observes the affairs of people and watches the course of each one’s life, and so it is written, “The paths of a person are before the eyes of God, and God looks at all his tracks.” And as he is good and wills that all people should be saved, he often purifies those who are entangled in sins by inflicting sickness on their body. He somewhere says by the voice of Jeremiah, “You shall be taught, O Jerusalem, by labor and the scourge.”
[AD 215] Clement of Alexandria on Jeremiah 6:6-9