Israel had gone wholeheartedly into idolatry, and as a result there was gross immorality in the land. The high place was a grove of trees where an idolatrous altar had been built. All kinds of sex orgies and drunken revelries were carried on there. Idolatry and immorality fuel one another. Where one exists, the other is sure to be close at hand. Idolatry furnishes a convenient religious "pass" to perform immoral acts.
"When a man makes a god according to the pattern of his own being, he makes a god like himself, an enlargement of his own imperfection. Moreover, the god which a man makes for himself will demand from him that which is according to his own nature...
Men will be faithful to those gods
who make no demands upon them
which are out of harmony with
the desires of their own hearts.
When God calls men, it is the call of the God of holiness, the God of purity, the God of love; and He demands that they rise to His height. He cannot accommodate Himself to the depravity of their nature. He will not consent to the things of desire within them that are of impurity and evil. He calls men up, and even higher, until they reach the height of perfect conformity to His holiness. God's call to humanity is always first pure, and then peaceable; first holy, and then happy; first righteous, and then rejoicing."
Dr. G. Campbell Morgan, Studies in the Prophecy of Jeremiah, p 36
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