Around 622 BC Jeremiah would have stood at one of the gates that led into the temple courts to proclaim this message. It would have been a place of heavy traffic into the area of worship.

Jeremiah’s message challenged the people to reform their ways instead of merely trusting their mystical, magical worship and worship center. The people had begun to trust in a form of false religion that came from false teaching and a false understanding of the word of the Lord.

Jeremiah quotes the people of Judah and, then, rejects their words as an incantation of false hope:

"This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!"

The triple repetition of, “This is the temple of the Lord,” is similar to the beginning of Babylonian magical texts used at this time (Maqlu). The people had based their understanding of the Lord on their own contemporary culture’s understanding and had misinterpreted the Lord’s intervention and deliverance of Jerusalem from the Assyrian invasion by Sennacherib in 701 BC (2 Chronicles 32). Their lack of understanding had led them to believe the temple of the Lord was indestructible and they were protected. Jeremiah tells them the Lord will destroy his own temple, city and people if they do not reflect his character and truth.

Jeremiah then uses a biblical account of a historical example that occurred around 1100 BC when the Lord destroyed his own tabernacle in Shiloh (1 Samuel 4) to support his words of warning.

The attitude of the monks and hermits from the 200's-400's who renounced the world for a life of asceticism, humility and charity can be found in a book entitled, "The sayings of the Desert Fathers."
Here is a sample quote:

"Someone questioned Abba Biare in these words,
'What shall I do to be saved?'
He replied,
'Go, reduce your appetite and your manual work, dwell without care in your cell and you will be saved.'"

(Read samples here and full text here.)