Charles Ellicott Commentary Jeremiah 31:18

"I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself [thus], Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a calf unaccustomed [to the yoke]: turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art Jehovah my God." — Jeremiah 31:18 (ASV)

I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself.—The prophet's thoughts still dwell on the exiles of the northern kingdom. They have been under the sharp discipline of suffering longer. By this time, he thinks, they must have learned repentance. He hears—or the LORD, speaking through him, hears—the moaning of remorse; and in that work, considered as already accomplished, he finds a new basis for his hope for Judah. Ephraim at last acknowledged that he had deserved the chastisement of the yoke that had been laid on him.

As a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke.—The comparison is the nearest approach in the Old Testament to the Greek proverb about kicking against the pricks (Acts 9:5; Acts 26:14). In Hosea 10:11 (Ephraim is as an heifer that is taught), which may well have been in Jeremiah’s thoughts, we have a similar comparison under a somewhat different aspect. The cry which is heard from the lips of the penitent, Turn you me ..., is, as it were, echoed from Jeremiah 3:7; Jeremiah 3:12; Jeremiah 3:14, and is reproduced in Lamentations 5:21.