Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 3

The parable of the guilty wife who is condemned in spite of all her denials is carried out to its logical results.

They say. —Better, So to speak, as introducing a new application of the figure. The direct reference is to Deuteronomy 24:4, which forbade the return to the past husband as an abomination, a law which the recent discovery of the Book of the Law (2 Kings 22:10–11) had probably brought into prominence. But there is also an obvious allusion to the like imagery in Hosea.

There the prophet had done, literally or in parable, what the law had forbidden (Hosea 2:16; Hosea 3:3), and so had held out the possibility of return and the hope of pardon. Jeremiah has to play a sterner part and make the apostate adulteress at least feel that she had sinned too deeply to have any claims to forgiveness. It might seem as if Jehovah could not now return to the love of His espousals, and make her what she once had been.

Yet return again to me, saith the Lord. —The words sound in the English like a gracious invitation, and—in spite of the authority of many interpreters who take it as an indignant exclamation, and return to me! an invitation given in irony, and so equivalent to rejection, as though that return were out of the question—it must, I think, be so taken. The prophet has, as we have seen, the history of Hosea in his mind, where there had been such a call to return (Hosea 2:19; Hosea 3:3), and actually refers to it and repeats it in Jeremiah 3:7; Jeremiah 3:12; Jeremiah 3:14. It surely implies a want of insight into the character of Jeremiah to suppose that he ever came before men as proclaiming an irrevocable condemnation, excluding the possibility of repentance.

Lift up your eyes. —The consciousness of guilt was, however, the only foundation of repentance, and the prophet’s work, therefore, in very tenderness, is to paint that guilt in the darkest colors possible. Still keeping to the parable of the faithless wife, he bids Israel, as such, to look to the “high places” that have witnessed her adulteries with those other lords for whom she had forsaken Jehovah. Like the harlots of the east, she had sat by the wayside, as Tamar had done (Genesis 38:14; compare also Proverbs 7:12 and Ezekiel 16:31), not so much courted by her paramours as courting them.

As the Arabian in the wilderness. —The Arabian is chosen as the representative of the lawless predatory tribes of the desert. As they, like the modern Bedouins, lay in ambush, waiting eagerly for their victims, so had the harlot Israel laid wait for her lovers, and so the land had been polluted.

Therefore the showers ... —Outward calamities were looked upon as chastisements for these sins. There had apparently been a severe drought in the reign of Josiah (Jeremiah 9:12; Jeremiah 25:1–6). There had been no showers in spring, no “latter rain” in autumn. Similar calamities are described in Amos 4:7; Haggai 1:11; Joel 1:18–20. The influence of the newly-discovered book of Deuteronomy (2 Chronicles 34:14; 2 Kings 22:8) had doubtless given a fresh emphasis to this view of natural disasters.

Will you not from this time cry to me ...? —Better, Have you not from this time cried to me ...? The prophet paints with a stern irony the parade of the surface repentance of Josiah’s reign. There had been a pathetic appeal to God as the forgiving husband of the faithless wife, but nonetheless had the wife returned to her wickedness.

Guide. —The same word as in Proverbs 2:17; the “chief friend,” as applied to the husband.

Will he reserve his anger for ever ... ?—These were questions that might well have been asked in the first burst of sorrowful, though superficial, repentance. The implied answer was negative: “No, He will not keep His anger to the end.” Yet, up to that point, facts contradicted that yearning hope. It should be noted that the word “anger” is not in the Hebrew. It is, however, rightly inserted, following the precedent of Nahum 1:2 and Psalms 103:9. The words indeed seem almost a quotation from the latter (Psalms 103:9), and Jeremiah 3:4-5 can probably be seen as cited from the penitential litanies the people had joined, which were too soon followed by a return to their old evils (Jeremiah 2:1–13).

Thou hast spoken and done evil things as thou couldest. — That is, resolutely and obstinately. That moving appeal to the mercy and love of Jehovah was followed by no improvement, but by a return to evil. Here the first prophecy, as reproduced from memory, ends, and the next verse begins a separate discourse.