They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man's, shall he return unto her again? Would not that land be utterly polluted? But thou hast committed fornication with many lovers; yet return to me, saith Jehovah.
Jeremiah opens chapter 3 with a rule from Israel's law: a wife who is sent away and marries another man may never go back to her first husband. God applies that rule to Israel — and then calls her back anyway.
When a man in Israel put away his wife, the law set out what came next:
In such a case in Israel he was required to give her a certificate of divorce, which left her free to marry another (vv. 1-3). But if she did marry another man and he also divorced her, or if he died, then the former husband must not take her back as a wife (v. 4). This would be most improper, for he had rejected her earlier for what he considered good reason. This is called "an abomination before the Lord." If there had been no marriage to another man, the case would be different. The law is firm and decided about this matter. Yet when the grace of God is known, it can lead to honest self-judgment in those who are guilty. It can wonderfully overcome the evil by a gracious and righteous recovery.
So the verse opens with a legal barrier. Under that law, the answer to "will he return to her?" is no.
Kelly reads the charge as a settled habit, not one failure:
God, however, is nowhere more Himself than in His tender mercy to His fallen people. A man could not take back the wife who had deserted him for another. "Israel had committed fornication with many lovers: yet return again to me, says the Lord." He points out their frequent and shameless unfaithfulness, while they call Him the father and guide of their youth. But whatever they said, they kept on doing evil (vv. 1-5).
Notice the two names side by side: the woman with many lovers, and the God she still calls the guide of her youth.
Divorce is the picture the prophets use for what God did with Israel. Later in this chapter He hands her the certificate:
Divorce is used symbolically to express God's action in putting away Israel, who had been grossly unfaithful, and giving her a bill of divorcement. Isa. 50:1; Jer. 3:8.
The tie had been cut in legal form. Bellett notes what grace does after that:
So Jeremiah shows the Lord acting in the very same grace, taking Jerusalem back even after she had proved herself unfaithful and had been legally and judicially put away. Jer. 3.
Commentators read the closing words as an invitation, not a closed door:
In Jeremiah 3 the Lord takes a different figure, and likens the sin of His people to harlotry. Even though their sin was as deep as that, we read, "Yet return again to me, says the Lord" (Jer. 3:1). So deep was His desire for their restoration.
A note on wording: the ESV puts this line as a question, "and would you return to me?" The older translation quoted here reads it as an invitation: "yet return again to me."
The pleading in this chapter also puts Judah in the picture:
In Jeremiah 3 we have the Lord pleading with them. He shows them that, bad as Israel might have been, Judah — which had held out for a time and gave fair promises under Josiah — would turn out no better. The crisis would surely come; but when a man has sunk to the lowest, God appears in His grace.
The promise reaches far beyond Jeremiah's own day:
Nothing can be more clear than this prediction, and nothing more gracious. Here God's grace steps in for the whole people in the last days. That is after the Assyrian captivity, which had already happened, and after the Babylonian one, which was about to happen. After all that, God would recall His people — not part of them, but all of them.
- The law — Israel's own rule forbade a husband to take back a wife who had gone to another man. That barrier stands at the front of the verse.
- The guilt — the charge is not one lapse but many lovers, and God names it, while she still calls Him the guide of her youth.
- The divorce — the separation was legal and judicial, not a mood; God had handed her the certificate.
- The grace — over that legal barrier comes the call to return, showing how deeply He wants her back.
- The end — the pleading leads to a promised recall of the whole people. God is nowhere more Himself than in mercy to those who have fallen furthest.
Lift up thine eyes unto the heights and see, where hast thou not been lain with? In the ways hast thou sat for them, as an Arab in the wilderness; and thou hast polluted the land with thy fornications and with thy wickedness.
Jeremiah 3 opens with a legal question. A husband cannot take back a wife who has left him for another man. God then tells Israel to lift her eyes to the bare heights and look. He is not inviting her to admire the view. He is asking her to name one place in the land she has not defiled.
Israel copied her neighbours, who worshipped their gods on the hills. One writer explains how these sites spread, and why God rejected them all — even the ones built for His own worship.
It seems the Canaanite nations used to set up places of worship for their false gods on various heights. They chose those heights to suit their own Satan-controlled desires... The Israelites were to destroy all the high places of the heathen, and so express their horror at their wicked ways. But human nature is no better in those who are near to God than in those who are far from Him. The time soon came, sadly, when Israel chose high places for themselves. Some of these were for idolatrous worship, and some for the worship of Jehovah. But all the high places offended Him, whatever the motives of those who set them up. They were the expression of self-will, of hearts that would not obey His commandments.
The verse uses shocking language. One writer shows why that word fits what Israel did, and where it left her with God.
"High places" for idolatrous worship dotted the whole land. In the shade of every green tree the people practised the horrors of heathen religion. Spiritually and literally, these unholy and unclean rites deserved the name of harlotry the prophets so often gave them. What could God do with such a nation but put them away?
The verse pictures her sitting by the road and waiting. She did not just take in idolatry when it came to her; she went looking for it. One writer describes the same appetite in Jerusalem.
The Lord then details the extreme impurity that Jerusalem turned to with unbridled lust. She did not only take in every uncleanness of idolatry that passed by. She went out and courted idolatrous dealings with the strangers on every side, and with the most distant Gentiles. Even her Philistine neighbours, content with their own gods, were ashamed of her.
The verse ends with the land itself polluted. Yet Jeremiah spoke while the nation was going through a reform under king Josiah. One writer notes what God saw underneath it.
Jeremiah 3 has the same character. It carries on the same address. But it gives details of Israel's and Judah's behaviour. It also announces the restoration of Israel by sovereign goodness, and the blessing of the last days when they return to God. Notice this. Before the Lord pleads with Israel over their folly, He first points out that no one sought Him and no one longed for Him. Neither people nor priests said, "Where is the LORD?"... In this chapter we have the solemn revelation that, as far as the people were concerned, the reformation under Josiah was only hypocrisy.
Human law had no answer for a marriage like this. One writer shows what God does with it.
God, however, is nowhere more Himself than in His pitiful mercy to His fallen people. A man could not take back the wife who had deserted him for another... He points out their frequent and shameless unfaithfulness, while all the time they called Him the father and guide of their youth. But whatever they said, they kept on doing evil.
The guilt is fully named, yet the appeal keeps coming. One writer describes what runs through this part of Jeremiah:
Here is divine love pleading tenderly with a bold, faithless, shameless people. Here are the assurances of forgiveness and everlasting mercy. They are deeply touching.
- Look: God tells His people to survey the heights. Self-will built those places. They offended Him whatever the worshipper's motive.
- Name: What happened there earns the word harlotry. Spiritually and literally, it stands condemned.
- Seek: The sin was not passive. She sat by the road and waited. She did not just take idolatry in; she courted it.
- Underneath: Josiah's reform looked good from the outside. The chapter calls it hypocrisy, because nobody was asking, "Where is the LORD?"
- Yet: The charge is total and the land defiled. Still God pleads. His mercy toward a fallen people is where He is most Himself.
And the showers have been withholden, and there hath been no latter rain; but thou hast a harlot's forehead, thou refusest to be ashamed.
God has been listing Israel's unfaithfulness. Now He points at the sky. The rain stopped, and the nation still would not link the drought with its own conduct. Two things stand together in this verse: blessing held back as a warning, and a face that will not blush.
The words fall inside a plea, not a verdict. One commentator sums up the chapter's opening. There God argues like a husband whose wife has left him:
God is nowhere more Himself than in His tender mercy to His fallen people. A man could not take back the wife who had deserted him for another. He points out their frequent and shameless unfaithfulness, while they still called Him the father and guide of their youth. But whatever they said, they kept on doing evil.
One writer says the rain in this verse means real rain, and points to passages that show it:
The rain has an entirely literal meaning. Read the following passages carefully for confirmation: Leviticus 26:4; Deuteronomy 11:14-17; 1 Kings 8:33-35 and Jeremiah 3:3.
God had told Israel plainly that rain and obedience went together. So an empty sky was never bad luck:
We know well that God does not want His people to suffer. He is not stingy, and if the rain is withheld, the fault lies with His people and not with Him. He had made this clear to them, so that they understood that when heaven was "shut up" it was in chastening.
The rain had been tied to a promise. Another writer traces that promise and its withdrawal:
God had promised Israel that if they would listen to His commandments, love Him, and serve Him with all their heart and soul, He would give them the rain of their land in its season, the early rain and the latter rain, so that they might gather in their grain, their wine, and their oil. But Israel, by their disobedience and departure from their God, had forfeited this promise, and God in chastisement had withheld both the early and the latter rain… God never withholds from His people except to draw out their sense of need, and to teach them that He alone is the source from which blessing comes.
The second half of the verse moves from the sky to the face. In the Bible the forehead stands for a person's open character:
Forehead: used as a symbol of manifest character. Israel in apostasy is described as having a harlot's forehead, and refusing to be ashamed (Jeremiah 3:3). Ezekiel's forehead was made as hard as diamond, because of the hardness of Israel's forehead, with whom he had to contend (Ezekiel 3:8-9).
A refusal to be ashamed comes at the end of a long road. One writer lists the corrections God sent, one after another, and what came of them:
The Lord had sent different chastisements on them at different times. There had been famines and drought. Rain fell in one place and not another, so that they might recognise the hand of God in it… Five times in this section we find the same statement, "Yet you have not returned to Me." They were an unrepentant nation and hardened their hearts as Pharaoh did.
Even after the language of prostitution, God still calls Israel back. The writer quotes Jeremiah 3:1 from an older translation, which reads the line as an invitation rather than the ESV's question:
In Jeremiah 3 the Lord takes a different figure, and likens the sin of His people to harlotry. Even though their sin was as deep as that, we read, "Yet return again to Me, says the Lord" (Jeremiah 3:1). So deep was His desire for their restoration.
One writer looks ahead to the day when Israel's conscience does answer:
Their conscience will be truly reached then, and they will return to the One they had forsaken and forgotten. "Behold we come to You," they say, "for You are the Lord our God" (v. 22).
- Rain — literal. The withheld showers and spring rain mean real weather, not a picture of spiritual blessing.
- Drought — deliberate. When heaven is shut up, the fault lies with the people, not with a stingy God. It is chastening, sent to draw out their sense of need.
- Forehead — revealing. The forehead shows a person's real character. Here it shows a settled boldness that no longer cares who is watching.
- Shame — refused. Correction that is ignored again and again ends in hardness, the same road Pharaoh took.
- Return — still open. Even to a people described in these terms the word stands: return to Me. The full answer comes when their conscience answers at last and they say, "You are the Lord our God."
Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth?
Jeremiah 3 opens with God speaking to a people who had left Him the way a wife leaves a husband. Verse 4 catches them turning back with warm, familiar words. They call Him Father. They call Him the guide of their youth. Do such words mean anything when the life behind them has not changed?
The reproach in this verse sits inside a plea, not a dismissal. One writer reads verses 1 to 5 together and finds God most like Himself where His people are at their worst:
God, however, is nowhere more Himself than in His pitiful mercy to His fallen people. A man could not take back the wife who had deserted him for another... He points out their frequent and shameless unfaithfulness, while they call Him the father and guide of their youth. But whatever they said, they kept on doing evil.
The title is not one God rejects. (The ESV reads "friend of my youth." Older translations, which the writers here follow, read "guide of my youth.") Translations also differ on the timing. The ESV asks what Israel has just now said. Others read the verse as God's appeal that from this time on they cry to Him. One writer takes it that way, and looks on to a day when the nation will mean it:
Jeremiah 3 goes on to expose their unfaithfulness and what it now costs them. It also pleads with them to cry to the Guide of their youth (vv. 1-5)... The call which follows to return and confess to the One who is married to them looks on to a future day... when in a national sense Israel shall call Him "My Father," and "not turn away from following Him" (vv. 14-19). This has never yet taken place, as we know.
The same self-confidence turns up centuries later. John the Baptist and the Lord both answer it:
In John the Baptist's time Israel shows the same spirit of self-confidence. They said in that spirit, "We have Abraham as our father." Under the Lord's ministry it is still the same: they still boast in the fatherhood of Abraham and of God (John 8). But these boasts were empty, as both John and the Lord tell them.
Another writer puts the same question to us today:
In practice they were not His children, whatever claims they might make. We know today that a true believer is a child of God. But if someone is living in rebellion, would it be right for him to announce to others that he is a child of God? He might well be answered as the Lord answered the Jews who claimed to be Abraham's children: "If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did" (John 8:39).
Something new enters here, and it echoes through the rest of the book:
Chapter 3:1-5. Here God gives the gracious invitation for the first time: "Return again to Me, says the LORD." And how many times after this the Lord pleads in the riches of His mercy for His people to return to Him and offers them forgiveness.
(Note: older translations read Jeremiah 3:1 as this invitation — "yet return again to me". The ESV makes it a question: "and would you return to me?")
The chapter then names what verse 4 was missing:
"How can I get back?" Listen. "Only acknowledge your iniquity" (Jer. 3:13). There is only one way back, and what is it? Confession. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).
A person can say these words and mean them. One writer presses them on young readers starting out in life:
Will you not pause, dear ones, before you set out on the untried path that may lie ahead? Will you make the words of Scripture your own, and say to that great and holy God, whose goodness has surrounded you with so many mercies, "My Father, you are the guide of my youth" (Jer. 3:4)?
- Youth — God accepts the title "guide of my youth". The trouble is not the name but the life that contradicts it.
- Words — Israel said the right thing and kept doing wrong. Fair speech, unchanged life.
- Claim — calling God Father settles nothing on its own. Israel boasted, "We have Abraham as our father," and the Lord pointed them to the works Abraham did.
- Mercy — this passage holds the first of Jeremiah's many invitations to return. God is nowhere more Himself than here, pleading with a people who had deserted Him.
- Return — later in the chapter God names the way back: acknowledge the wrong. Confession turns the words of verse 4 from a cover-up into a homecoming — and one day the nation will say them and mean them.
Will he keep [his anger] for ever? Will he preserve it perpetually? Behold, thou hast spoken and hast done evil things, and thou art [so] determined.
Jeremiah 3 opens with God pleading with a people who had left Him, as a wife leaves her husband. By verse 5 they are speaking to Him again. They ask how long His anger will last, while their lives stay the same. The verse puts their smooth religious question next to God's verdict on the life behind it.
Under human law, a husband could not take back a wife who had left him for another man. God does not act by that rule.
God, however, is nowhere more Himself than in His compassionate mercy to His fallen people. A man could not take back the wife who had deserted him for another. "Israel had committed fornication with many lovers: yet return again to me, says the Lord." He points out how often and how shamelessly they were unfaithful, while all the time they call Him the father and guide of their youth. But whatever they said, they kept on doing evil. (vv. 1-5)
Kelly follows an older translation of verse 1, which reads that line as an invitation to return.
The last line of the verse weighs their words against their deeds. Jeremiah spoke during a national religious reform under king Josiah. One writer draws the hard conclusion this chapter presses about that reform.
In this chapter we have the solemn revelation that, as far as the people were concerned, the reformation under Josiah was nothing but hypocrisy.
They ask about God's anger while using the warmest names for Him. One writer shows what the chapter wants them to do with those names.
Jeremiah 3 continues to lay bare their unfaithfulness and the present consequence of the same; pleading with them also to cry to the Guide of their youth (vv. 1-5).
Meant sincerely, those same words become a real prayer. One writer puts them in the mouth of a young person starting out in life.
Will you not stop, dear friends, before you set out on the untried path ahead of you? Make the words of Scripture your own. Say to that great and holy God, whose goodness has surrounded you with so many mercies, "My Father, You are the guide of my youth" (Jer. 3:4).
The people who ask whether His anger lasts forever have done all the evil they could. They treat mercy as cover for sin. One writer is blunt about where that leads.
Be careful not to abuse the mercy of God. Do not suck poison out of the sweet flower of God's mercy. Do not think that because God is merciful, you may go on in sin; that is to make mercy your enemy. To sin because mercy abounds is the devil's logic. Anyone who sins because of mercy is like a man who wounds his head because he has a bandage. Anyone who sins because of God's mercy will get judgment without mercy. Mercy abused turns to fury.
The chapter does not end with the charge. It also carries God's own call to come back.
Here is the first time the gracious invitation is given: "Return again to Me, says the LORD." And how many times afterwards the Lord pleads, in the riches of His mercy, for His people to return to Him, and offers them forgiveness.
The same writer traces where all this ends.
He shows them that bad as Israel might have been, Judah that had held out for a time and gave fair promises under Josiah would turn out no better. The crisis would surely come; but when a man has sunk to the lowest, God appears in His grace.
- Mercy offered. God is "nowhere more Himself than in His compassionate mercy to His fallen people." Human law would not let a man take back the wife who deserted him. God calls her back.
- Mercy named. They call Him by the tenderest names, Father and guide of their youth. The chapter pleads with them to cry to that Guide, not just quote Him.
- Mercy contradicted. "Whatever they said, they kept on doing evil." The great reform of the day was, as far as the people went, "nothing but hypocrisy."
- Mercy abused. To ask whether God's anger lasts forever while doing all the evil you can is "the devil's logic." Mercy used as permission "turns to fury."
- Mercy waiting. The same chapter gives the first "Return again to Me" — and "when a man has sunk to the lowest, God appears in His grace."