Water is vital for life, but we tend to take it for granted in our country. When the siege came water would be very scare. Indeed a tactic of many sieges was to cut off the water supply to the besieged city, and key defence mechanism was to somehow ensure that a supply of water was maintained. Drought would also come upon the land.
In verse 7 Jeremiah calls on God to have mercy, even though the people were clearly guilty. Jeremiah makes his plea on the grounds of who God is and that His name is attached to the people of Judah.
The Lord refuses. The fundamental fact is that a time will come when judgement cannot and will not be put off any longer. The events foretold by Jeremiah happened, they are recorded in history. In the same way hell and the final judgement will happen. Instead of having silly and futile debates about how can a God of love send people to hell and on the precise nature of hell, we would be far better off focusing on repentance.
Jeremiah is instructed not to pray for the people. Now we should be most wary of making general advice out of this!
Jeremiah points out to God that all the other "prophets" were saying sword and famine would not happen. It is quite normal for society in general to be totally ignorant of the truth. These false prophets were lying and not speaking God's word.
It is not clear who is speaking in verse 19-22, but it seems like it is Jeremiah. He still calls on God to be merciful. He still puts his hope in the Lord.
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