How Long Will Fools Love Scoffing and the Call to Return

Rabbi Acha opened: "How long, you simple ones, will you love simplicity, and scoffers delight in their scoffing?" (Proverbs 1:22). Rabbi Shimon ben Nezirah said: It is the way of the world that a person eats foul-smelling food for two or three days and his soul is sickened by it. You - how many years have you been serving idolatry, the very thing of which it is written "You shall say to it, Get out" (Isaiah 30:22), [a thing fit only for] filth you say to it, and yet your soul is not turned away from it? Rabbi Yudan said: Two men prophesied about scoffing, and these are they - Solomon and Isaiah. Solomon said, "and scoffers delight in their scoffing" (Proverbs ibid.), and Isaiah said, "And now, do not scoff, lest your bonds be made strong" (Isaiah 28:22). Rabbi Pinchas and Rabbi Yirmiah in the name of Rabbi Shmuel bar Rav Yitzchak: Harsh is scoffing, for its beginning is chastisements and its end is destruction. Its beginning is chastisements, "lest your bonds be made strong" (ibid.); and its end is destruction, "for I have heard of a destruction utterly determined" (ibid.). "Turn back at my reproof; behold, I will pour out my spirit to you, I will make my words known to you" (Proverbs 1:23). If you turn back at my reproof, I will pour out my spirit to you, by the hand of Ezekiel - "The word of the LORD came indeed to Ezekiel son of Buzi the priest" (Ezekiel 1:3). And if not, "I will make my words known to you" (Proverbs ibid.), by the hand of Jeremiah. Therefore Scripture needs to say, "The words of Jeremiah son of Hilkiah" (Jeremiah 1:1).