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An Intertextuality Pair — one connection between two passages, shown as linked verse cards: the Later text and the Earlier text it quotes, alludes to or echoes. The Significance essay explains why the link matters and where it points in Christ.

Reference Type— how explicit the link is: Quotation, Allusion, or Echo
Connection Method(s)— how it carries meaning: e.g. Typology, Promise-Fulfillment, Analogy, Longitudinal Theme
Found via— where the connection was identified, e.g. the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge or an Anchor-Text Network

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Intertextuality Pair

Jeremiah 2:11 → Deuteronomy 32:17

Allusion

Later text

Jeremiah 2:11BSB

Has a nation ever changed its gods, though they are no gods at all? Yet My people have exchanged their Glory for useless idols.

Earlier text

Deuteronomy 32:17BSB

They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they had not known, to newly arrived gods, which your fathers did not fear.

Significance

Both texts expose the absurdity of Israel exchanging the true God for non-gods. Deuteronomy 32:17 warns that Israel "sacrificed to demons, not to God, to gods they had not known" (לֹא אֱלֹהַּ, lo eloah), while Jeremiah 2:11 asks rhetorically whether any nation has ever changed its gods "though they are no gods at all" (וְהֵמָּה לֹא אֱלֹהִים, vehemmah lo elohim). Both employ the striking formulation of denying divine status to the objects of worship, using the negation of אֱלֹהִים (elohim). Jeremiah escalates the charge from Deuteronomy's historical narrative into a comparative argument: even pagan nations remain loyal to their false gods, yet Israel — uniquely — abandoned the living God for what has no power. The prophetic indictment transforms Moses's warning into a courtroom accusation against Judah. Jeremiah's own phrase for this exchange—"My people have exchanged their Glory for useless idols" (לְלֹא יוֹעִיל, lelo yo'il, "for what does not profit")—sharpens the charge that Israel traded the true God for the utterly useless.

Found via: Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Redemptive-Historical Progression — the Song of Moses's witness that Israel would sacrifice to "no-gods" (לֹא אֱלֹהַּ, Deut 32:17) advances into Jeremiah's courtroom indictment of a nation that has actually exchanged its Glory for what are "no gods at all" (לֹא אֱלֹהִים); the predicted apostasy of the covenant witness-song becomes the prosecuted apostasy of Judah's final generation.