Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 7:24

"But they hearkened not, nor inclined their ear, but walked in [their own] counsels [and] in the stubbornness of their evil heart, and went backward, and not forward." — Jeremiah 7:24 (ASV)

Imagination. —Better, stubbornness, as in Jeremiah 3:17.

Went backward and not forward. —The whole sacrificial system, even at its best, to say nothing of its idolatrous corruptions, was accordingly, from Jeremiah’s point of view, a retrograde movement. The apostasy of the people in the worship of the golden calf involved a similar deflection, necessary and inevitable though it might be as a process of education, from the first ideal polity, based upon the covenant made with Abraham, i.e., upon a pure and spiritual theism, the emblems and ordinances of which, though shadows of good things to come, were in themselves weak and beggarly elements (Hebrews 10:1; Galatians 4:9).