Why did Jeremiah respond to the people by asking if the Lord remembered all the offerings they had offered in Judah?

 The people’s defiant response in Jeremiah 44:15–19 to the prophet’s message of judgment revises all that has happened in Judah without any reference to the Lord. They spoke as though it was the pagan gods, especially the queen of heaven, who determined the fate of the nation. It is as if they consider the Lord to be either powerless or irrelevant to their lives. Jeremiah directly opposes and corrects this view by asking a rhetorical question. Did not the Lord remember the offerings they made to the queen of heaven? Did it not come into his mind? The implied answer is that indeed the Lord had seen all that they had done. For the Lord to remember their idolatry does not just mean he knows about it or recalls, but it means he intends to act on it. The LORD could no longer bear your evil deeds and the abominations you committed. Not only was the Lord perfectly aware of their actions, but their behaviour had become so obnoxious that he had to act in judgment. It was for this reason that their land has become a desolation and a waste and a curse, without inhabitants, as it is this day. This had happened because you made offerings and because you sinned against the LORD and did not obey the voice of the LORD or walk in his law and in his statutes and in his testimonies that this disaster has happened to you, as at this day. Their interpretation of all that has happened, and their current situation, is totally wrong, even deliberately deceptive. It is not the gods who determine their fate, but the Lord. It is the Lord who has brought disaster on them because of their idolatry, not the gods who have punished them for their lapse in making offerings to them. Their attempt to rewrite the spiritual significance of their deliberate and arrogant unfaithfulness as the Lord’s covenant people simply will not stand.