The people ask this question to dismiss Jeremiah’s symbolic pronouncement as obvious common sense, refusing to engage with its deeper prophetic meaning. By treating God’s word as trivial folk wisdom about wine storage, they mock both the messenger and the message. This rhetorical question serves as a deflection strategy, avoiding the uncomfortable implications of divine judgment by reducing prophetic speech to banality.

God responds by explaining the metaphor’s true meaning in verses 13-14, declaring He will fill every inhabitant with drunkenness like wine and then smash them against one another without pity, mercy, or compassion. The LORD interprets their dismissive question by revealing the wine represents not blessing but judgment, the drunkenness of divine wrath leading to their mutual destruction.

The people’s question drips with sarcasm and contempt for what they perceive as Jeremiah stating the obvious. The Hebrew construction intensifies their mockery with the infinitive absolute (yada neda), creating emphatic force: “Do we not indeed know?” They treat the prophet’s declaration as absurdly self-evident, like announcing that water is wet. Their question reveals they heard only the literal surface, of course jars hold wine, while completely missing the symbolic freight. God had spoken a riddle designed to arrest attention, but spiritual deafness prevented them from asking what it might mean beyond face value. This illustrates how familiarity with religious language can breed contempt, turning even divine pronouncements into opportunities for mockery. The theological weight here is sobering: when people grow so hardened that God’s word becomes material for cynical jokes, judgment is already underway in their hearts.