God's covenantal relationship with the children of Israel including the Jews forms the basis for the coming days of vengeance. Unfaithfulness to the covenant supplies the reason for God's vengeance. The nations of Israel and Judah have turned away from God. He will therefore bring a sword against them. God views the wanton violation of His covenant through breaking His commandments as a breach of contract and an attack on His mercy and favor. He will avenge Himself by punishing those who despise His commands. The danger at the end remains the refusal to hear and obey the Creator.

The theme of forsaking the covenant runs through Hebrews as a warning drawn from Israel's history and applied directly to those under the New Covenant. The author establishes this by contrasting the covenant given through angels at Sinai with the far greater salvation offered through Christ. Because every transgression under the lesser covenant received just recompense, the rhetorical question follows: how shall anyone escape who neglects so great a salvation? This neglect is not immediate rebellion but a gradual drifting away from what has been heard, which ultimately leads to the same fate as those who broke covenant outright. The account of Zedekiah in Ezekiel 17 illustrates this principle vividly. Nebuchadnezzar granted a remnant of Judah a form of deliverance, installing Zedekiah as king under a sworn covenant that required subservience. Rather than accepting this arrangement with gratitude, Zedekiah rebelled by seeking alliance with Egypt, despising his oath. God's rhetorical question—Will he who does such things escape? Can he break a covenant and still be delivered?—receives a direct answer: he shall not escape. Though this was merely a covenant between men, God treated its violation as serious, since Nebuchadnezzar functioned as His agent. This account parallels the greater covenant made at baptism, where a pledge of absolute loyalty to God was given. Just as Zedekiah's rebellion against his covenant partner was ultimately rebellion against God, so too would neglecting the New Covenant constitute forsaking God Himself, with consequences at least as severe as those Zedekiah faced. This warning is reinforced by Israel's wilderness generation, who "always went astray in their heart" and did not know God's ways despite forty years of direct experience with His works. Their hearts became hardened—a spiritual sclerosis—until God swore they would not enter His rest. Their failure stemmed from unbelief, which in Hebrews is treated as synonymous with disobedience: they heard the word but it was not mixed with faith, so it did not profit them. This unbelief, described as "departing from the living God," shows that forsaking the covenant is not always a single dramatic act of rejection but often the endpoint of prolonged neglect, where hearts become progressively unresponsive to God's voice through the deceitfulness of sin. Elijah's episode at Horeb offers a further illustration, though on an individual level. His repeated declaration that Israel had "forsaken Your covenant" was true, yet his own hardened perspective—believing himself the only faithful one left—revealed a form of unbelief that clouded his view of God's sufficiency. Though he did not forsake the covenant himself, his rigid mindset caused him to miss out on further usefulness to God, demonstrating that even faithful servants can drift toward diminished sensitivity to God's voice. Taken together, these examples show that forsaking the covenant begins subtly—through drifting, neglect, and the gradual hardening of the heart—rather than through immediate, willful rejection. The remedy lies in daily exhortation, attentiveness to God's word, and Sabbath-keeping, all of which guard against the slow accumulation of unbelief that ultimately leads to covenant-breaking and its severe, inescapable consequences.