Israel's great sin is unfaithfulness, and its character is fickle: inconstant and changeable, especially in loyalty. Israelites believe that change and variety are the keys to fulfillment. This shows in multiple sexual partners before marriage, frequent divorce, and a consumer culture that thrives on constant fashion changes, redesigns, and "new and improved" claims pushed by celebrity hawkers. The craving for something new makes the culture ethically and morally unstable and drives individuals into debt as they seek satisfaction from things that cannot give it. Israel lives for the moment and does what she feels like doing rather than disciplining herself, especially when right conduct requires sacrifice or discomfort. This is the "grass is always greener" disease. God foresaw it, which is why Deuteronomy 12 commands the destruction of Canaan's places of worship, limits sacrifice to one place, forbids inquiring into how the nations served their gods, and forbids adding to or taking from His commands. Deuteronomy 23:6 and Ezra 9:12 add that Israel must not seek alliances with the heathen. The same fickle discontentment appeared early, in Numbers 11, when Israel wept for Egypt's fish, melons, and leeks and despised the manna. That sin was a lack of faith in God's providence, driven by arrogant self-concern, and it sought different experiences instead of trusting what God generously provided. The manna and the Old Testament's uniform priestly fire, clothing, altar, and festival site show that God wants His children unified in one system, His own, strengthened only through His Word. Israel stubbornly sought fulfillment in variety instead and became a great whore.

Israel's insatiable curiosity and craving for variety flowed from an evil heart of unbelief and led her continually astray. Like a deceitful bow, she looked promising but failed under testing, and God calls her weak of heart, insatiable, unsatisfied, and contrary. Her drive for the excitement of some new thing pulled her toward idols and other ways of life, which God labels adultery because she abandoned Him for them. To her, His commands always seemed to deny her pleasure. Jeremiah 2 compares this urge to a camel or wild donkey in heat, and God finally divorced her. The same proclivity toward fickle, discontented, grass-is-greener yearning lies in all mankind, and it is especially dangerous to God's people, who live among Israelitish nations and can be lured into their tolerant, multicultural Laodiceanism. Babylon's system feeds this human nature by promoting frequent change, thrill-seeking, gambling, and variety of religious experience as the answers to fulfillment, yet it produces only a temporary burst of emotional well-being and ends in confusion, disunity, and death. God answers with oneness and uniformity: one place of worship, one uniform for the priests, no additions or subtractions to His commands, and no seeking of foreign religions. The remedy is self-control through faith, sacrifice, and seeking God in order to live as He lives. The alternative is taking sovereignty to ourselves and becoming our own idol, since we cannot submit to both God's will and our own fickle drives.

Fulfillment is not generated by variety of experience. Experiencing many things may produce excitement and greater general knowledge, but true fulfillment comes from oneness with God through living His way of life; a dynamic relationship with God is life's missing dimension. Israel, like her ancient ancestors, still seeks fulfillment in pursuits that cannot produce a complete life, doing little more than pursuing her lusts. Her great weakness is an unbelieving, impatient, hardheaded, fickle, immature curiosity bent on self-satisfaction. Followed, it leads to unfaithfulness to the covenant through idolatry, because once ignorance is removed, a person takes sovereignty to himself. Israel serves herself, following the whim of the moment so that she might have fun, and her unbelief gives her nature free rein to follow the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Refusing to delay gratification of desires is a failure to seek to be like God; disbelieving Him, people do little to control their appetites. Believers must instead be willing to discipline themselves, sacrifice, and accept discomfort in order to be faithful, spiritually fleeing Babylon's system so that it does not govern their attitudes and conduct.