Why does the Lord tell Jeremiah to not pray for this people?

In the second part of the Lord’s response to the plea for salvation, he speaks directly to Jeremiah and tells him not to pray for the welfare of this people. This is the third time in the book that Jeremiah is told not to pray (see Jeremiah 7:16; Jeremiah 11:14). On each occasion the command not to pray highlights the spiritual condition of the people. The Lord has already given his verdict on a stubbornly unfaithful people and it is not appropriate to pray for covenant blessings for them.¹ Jeremiah, however, keeps praying. This raises the question of whether one should ever stop praying for people who are facing judgment. Jeremiah’s love for Judah and the fact that he is part of the nation means that he simply cannot stop interceding for them. He refused to give up on the possibility that the nation may turn to the Lord in repentance.² Despite telling him three times not to pray, not once in the book does the Lord rebuke Jeremiah for his persistence in prayer. It seems that the Lord’s command to not pray cannot simply be taken as an outright ban on prayer for Judah. But the commands should have shocked the people and made them deeply aware of just how serious their unfaithfulness to the Lord was. Sadly, this does not seem to have happened.