John Calvin Commentary Jeremiah 3:21

"A voice is heard upon the bare heights, the weeping [and] the supplications of the children of Israel; because they have perverted their way, they have forgotten Jehovah their God." — Jeremiah 3:21 (ASV)

What I have stated now becomes more evident—that the case of the Israelites is here set before the Jews, so that the perverse, whom God had spared, might know that the same punishment awaited them, unless they returned to him in due time.

For the Prophet declares that the Israelites were weeping and in tears because they had departed from their God and violated the faith they had pledged to him.

For what purpose did he do this? It was so that the Jews, who indulged themselves in their own pleasures, might be awakened and convinced that unless they anticipated God’s judgments, the same tears and the same weeping were prepared for them.

The Israelites, indeed, did not yet weep in this way and show signs of true repentance; for the Prophet does not here commend their feeling or their piety, but indicates that they were so severely afflicted because they had forsaken their God.

A voice, he says, was heard on high places,—that is, it was everywhere sufficiently known how cruelly the Israelites were oppressed by their enemies. Now they cried, then they called themselves the most wretched of men. Why was this lamentation? Because they had perverted their ways.

It is, then, as if he had said—that it was a monstrous perverseness in the Jews that, being warned by the punishment of their brethren, they did not repent. For the calamity that happened to the Israelites filled all men with terror.

That kingdom had, indeed, flourished for a long time, but the land had been emptied of its inhabitants and was occupied by wild beasts, until some were sent from Persia and other parts in the East to cultivate it.

How could a land so pleasant and so fruitful have become like a desert? It was because God had so predicted:

“Ye have neglected,” he says, “my Sabbaths, and your land shall rest, and it shall no more be wearied by you” (Leviticus 26:34–35).

It was a terrible sight; and nations, far and wide, were able to see how great the impiety of that people must have been, on whom God had taken such dreadful vengeance. Were not the Jews, who had this solitude and this devastation of the land before their eyes, extremely stupid in overlooking all this?

We now see the design of the Prophet when he says, A voice on high places was heard, as if the Israelites cried on the tops of mountains. And he adds, the weeping of the supplications, and so on; but he does not mean that they were prayers that arose from faith, but simply that they were lamentations that signified misery and wretchedness.

In giving a reason, the Prophet does not mention what the Israelites confessed, but only shows the cause why they so deeply deplored their calamities: it was because they had perverted their ways, and forgotten Jehovah their God. He afterwards adds—