In a sense we sort of got away with it. It is as if we cheated in school, but we did not get expelled. We just got a warning. We got drunk and we got sick, but we did not get in an accident. We did not wreck the car and bring serious bodily harm or even loss of life to ourselves or others. We were promiscuous, but no one contracted a disease and no pregnancy was involved. It scared us half to death, but we got away with it. We stole something from the workplace, and we were warned but we were not fired. You see, these temporal judgments, they are lighter than what we deserved. Just we were scared by it. We saw the hand of God in these judgments, our sickness, our injury, a lesser penalty. But what happened then is that we did not learn. We did not draw the right conclusion. We did not get down on our knees and thanked God that we did not receive the ultimate penalty or a harsher judgment, or a worse discipline - and we just went right back to it again.
This is what he is saying has happened—God did not judge us. In 587 BC the Babylonians came down, they utterly destroyed Jerusalem, they hauled us off into captivity, but a remnant survived. And that remnant was brought back and we are back in the land. We have our place again. He spared us. We received the ultimate shot across the bow. It was almost utter destruction, but not quite. And even then, he is saying, we did not learn. We are back at it again. The same old things: mingling with the people, breaking the laws of God, offending him, provoking him—sinning against God, against grace, and against knowledge. Sinning in spite of his temporal judgments.1
Terry L. Johnson
13 And after all that has come upon us for our evil deeds and for our great guilt, seeing that you, our God, have punished us less than our iniquities deserved and have given us such a remnant as this,