Chapter 14 - Drought, Sword and Now Pestilence (Pandemic)

Imagine a circumstance in which leaders of a nation, political leaders and religious leaders, try to get the people to believe that though things are falling apart, everything is mostly okay. Imagine that people are dying, that things are getting worse, not better, but that the leaders are intent upon holding on to power by convincing the people that the danger in the land is not terribly significant. 

There you have Jeremiah 14. 
The chapter refers to famine and the sword. This is a poetic way of saying that the economy will dry up and the nation will be ravaged by other nations. The sin and ignorance of the leaders and the people has reached a point where the environment has been devastated. The chapter says that the land is “betrayed” or in the NIV the land is “cracked” and dry and useless. 

However, even as pestilence begins to come over the land, the leaders tell the people that there is really nothing to worry about. 

God calls them false leaders, worthless shepherds.  Hmmn. I think it might not be a stretch to imagine vacant leadership like that.