Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 32:31

"For this city hath been to me a provocation of mine anger and of my wrath from the day that they built it even unto this day; that I should remove it from before my face," — Jeremiah 32:31 (ASV)

From the day that they built it ... —The words confirm the inference already drawn in the preceding note, that the thoughts of the prophet turn to the time when Israel was still one people under David and Solomon. Even then, he seems to say, the city had fallen far short of the holiness which it should have attained, and which David sought for it (Psalms 15-24), and had only been for anger and for fury to the Lord. There is no Hebrew word answering to “provocation.”

It is noticeable that the prophet, as if forgetting that Jerusalem had been a Jebusite city before David took possession (2 Samuel 5:6–10), speaks as if it had been built by Israel. It is obvious, however, that it was so much enlarged and altered after this capture that the words that describe it this way may have been not only practically, but almost literally, true.