Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 3:19

"But I said, How I will put thee among the children, and give thee a pleasant land, a goodly heritage of the hosts of the nations! and I said, Ye shall call me My Father, and shall not turn away from following me." — Jeremiah 3:19 (ASV)

But I said. —More accurately, And I said. There is no contrast with what precedes. The speaker is, of course, Jehovah. The phrase How shall I put thee! is an exclamation rather than a question, the utterance of a promise with an intensity of affirmation. Special stress is laid on the pronoun “I.” The words have been translated by some commentators, following the Targum, as How shall I clothe thee with children?

A pleasant land. —Literally, as noted in the margin, a land of desire, that is, desirable.

A goodly heritage of the hosts of nations. —More accurately, a heritage of the beauty of beauties (Hebrew for “chief beauty”) of the nations. The English version rests on the assumption that the word translated “beauties” is the same as that elsewhere translated “Sabaoth,” or “hosts,” which it closely resembles.

And I said. —This is not, as in the English version, the answer to a question, but the continuation of the same thought. God will treat repentant Israel as His child: He will lead Israel to trust Him as a father. The days of apostasy (“turning away”) will then be over. The original Hebrew seems, judging from the Septuagint version, to have had the plural “ye shall call,” “ye shall not turn away,” with the prophet shifting from the collective unity to the individuals who composed it.