"Then I said, 'These are only the poor; they have no sense ...'" (Je 5:4 ESV)

Jeremiah had quite a bourgeois reaction to the moral and spiritual situation in Judah. It's the sort of reaction we often mimic ourselves. Either it's the "liberal elite" or the "lazy" and "selfish people on welfare" that are morally bankrupt.

Jeremiah is told by God to find someone "who does justice and seeks truth, that I may pardon her [Jerusalem]" (Je 5:1 ESV). Instead, Jeremiah sees what God has known all along: "They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to repent." (Je 5:3 ESV).

It is here Jeremiah steps into the trap we often step into:
Then I said, These are only the poor;
they have no sense;
for they do not know the way of the LORD,
the justice of their God.
I will go to the great
and will speak to them,
for they know the way of the LORD,
the justice of their God.
But they all alike had broken the yoke;
they had burst the bonds. Jeremiah 5:4-5 ESV.

Why did he assume that the problem of sin was associated with a economic or social position? We often make assumptions like that. We shouldn't assume that the rich, the powerful and those with authority are any better or worse than someone else. Sin attaches itself to everyone, ourselves included.

Jeremiah hoped that if he climbed up the echelons of society he would find a purified reverence for God. He didn't find that at all. Note that he didn't necessarily find the opposite either.