Jeremiah 3:23

Jeremiah 3 has pictured Israel as a wife who played the harlot with many lovers, and Judah as guiltier still, because Judah watched the northern kingdom go into exile for those same sins and went on in them (Jeremiah 3:1–11). God has nonetheless called the backsliders to return, with a promise of restoration and unity under pastors after his own heart (Jeremiah 3:12–18). The northern kingdom had fallen to Assyria in 722 BC, and Judah was on the same road. Jeremiah prophesied in Judah’s last decades, from about 627 BC to the Babylonian exile in 586 BC.

Verse 19 lets us hear God speak his own thoughts: “But I said, How shall I put thee among the children, and give thee a pleasant land, a goodly heritage of the hosts of nations?” The question is a Father’s grief. It measures how far his people have gone and how great a grace it will take to bring them back into the family. God already knows the answer, and he gives it at once: “Thou shalt call me, My father; and shalt not turn away from me.” He opens the way home himself, and the way is a relationship. They will call him Father, and they will stay with him.

The word for children, bên, means son, and it is used widely of children, descendants and the members of a people. Israel had been God’s son from the start: “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt” (Hosea 11:1). To be put “among the children” is to be given again the place and the blessings of sons in his household. The word for father, ʼâb, carried authority, provision and protection in Israel, along with the loyalty that binds a family. To call God “My father” is to trust him, depend on him and belong to him, and to find in him the source of life and identity.

The closing words, “shalt not turn away from me”, use shûwb, the verb for turning back or returning, which runs all through this chapter. It is also used of things that pass away, such as anger turning away. Here it is the turning away that Israel had made a habit of, and God’s desire is a loyalty that lasts. Moses had already promised that when Israel returned to the LORD with all their heart and soul, he would gather them and bless them again in the land (Deuteronomy 30:1–10).

“Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith the LORD.” After the longing of verse 19, verse 20 states plainly what Israel has done, and it prepares for the confession that follows.

The verb bâgad comes twice. Its root meaning is to cover, as with a garment, and from that to act covertly, and in matters of trust it means to deal deceitfully and betray. Said twice in one breath, it marks Israel’s unfaithfulness as deliberate and repeated, the willful breaking of a sacred bond. The wife is ʼishshâh, the usual word for a woman or a wife. Her husband is rêaʻ, a word for a companion, friend or close associate, which the KJV renders “husband” here. The one Israel left was her closest companion, and he had kept his side of the covenant.

The “house of Israel” (bayith Yisrâʼêl) is the whole covenant people taken together, the northern tribes already in exile and Judah following them. “Saith the LORD” makes it God’s own word, the accusation of a husband who has been wronged and is grieved by it.

“A voice was heard upon the high places, weeping and supplications of the children of Israel: for they have perverted their way, and they have forgotten the LORD their God.” With this verse the people’s own lament begins, an answer to God’s call to return earlier in the chapter.

The high places (shᵉphîy) were bare hills, where Israel worshipped the LORD mixed with Baal and Asherah, or worshipped other gods outright. The law of Moses commanded that such places be destroyed (Deuteronomy 12:2–4). Now the sound from those same hills is weeping. The places where Israel turned from God have become the places where their pain makes them cry out to him. The word for weeping, Bᵉkîy, also means a dripping, and the KJV renders it elsewhere as sore or continual weeping. Supplications are earnest pleas for mercy. Together they describe a people in anguish who are beginning, however desperately, to turn toward God.

God answers the weeping with a call and a promise. “Return” is shûwb again, a command to turn around and go back. It holds the Bible’s whole idea of repentance, which in Hebrew is called teshuvah: turning from sin and turning back to God. Even as backsliders they are still his children, bên, and he appeals to them as their Father. The word for “backsliding” in the call is shôwbâb, and “backslidings” is mᵉshûwbâh, a noun formed from shûwb that means apostasy or turning away. So God calls them to turn back from their turning away. Jeremiah uses this word for Judah’s settled habit of straying, and he has already told them that their backslidings would reprove them (Jeremiah 2:19).

The promise is “I will heal”. The verb râphâʼ means to mend or to cure. It is used of God’s healing and also of human healers and physicians. Here God treats their apostasy as a wound or a sickness that he alone will cure. He promises to forgive them, to mend the broken relationship and to make them whole again. Hosea gives the same call with the same promise of healing (Hosea 14:1–4), Isaiah tells sinners whose sins are as scarlet to come and be made clean (Isaiah 1:18), and Ezekiel promises a new heart and a new spirit (Ezekiel 36:26–27). Jesus told of a son who came home from a far country and found his father running to meet him (Luke 15:11–24).

The second half of the verse gives the people’s answer, the response God wants: “Behold, we come unto thee; for thou art the LORD our God.” The verb ʼâthâh, to come, describes a humble and immediate turning back. The reason they give is a confession of who he is. “The LORD” is Yᵉhôvâh, God’s covenant name, and “God” is ʼĕlôhîym, a word plural in form that, when it names the true God, is read as a plural of majesty. To say “thou art the LORD our God” is to give him back the place that idols had taken, the idols whose emptiness Isaiah exposes (Isaiah 44:9–20).

“Truly in vain is salvation hoped for from the hills, and from the multitude of mountains: truly in the LORD our God is the salvation of Israel.” Both halves of the verse open with the same Hebrew word, ʼâkên, “truly”, and they stand against each other: one way is a lie, and the other is certain.

The hills and mountains stand for the high places, where altars to Baal and Asherah stood on the hilltops, sites people thought were nearer to heaven. Judah kept building them in spite of the law (1 Kings 14:23), and “the multitude of mountains” shows how far the idolatry had spread across the land.

“In vain” is sheqer, a falsehood, a lie or a sham, and the word also carries the sense of something vain that ends in disappointment. The hope Israel placed in those altars was a lie that let them down. Idols are the work of human hands. They hear no prayer and give no help, and Jeremiah mocks them for it (Jeremiah 10).

“Salvation” is tᵉshûwʻâh, which means rescue: deliverance, help, safety and victory. For Israel it covered deliverance from enemies, protection, provision and life itself, and it includes rescue from sin. All of it is “in the LORD our God”, Yᵉhôvâh, the living God who is in covenant with Israel. Scripture says this in many places: “I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no saviour” (Isaiah 43:11), and “Salvation belongeth unto the LORD: thy blessing is upon thy people. Selah” (Psalm 3:8). Hosea puts the same confession into Israel’s mouth: “Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses: neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods: for in thee the fatherless findeth mercy.”

The hills of our own day are whatever we lean on for security and identity apart from God: money, a career, the approval of others, a political cause, our own intelligence and ability. Each of them is sheqer in the end, and our safety is in the LORD.

“For shame hath devoured the labour of our fathers from our youth; their flocks and their herds, their sons and their daughters.” The confession now counts what idolatry has cost.

“Shame” is bôsheth, disgrace and humiliation, a word Jeremiah ties again and again to idol worship. Here it is the subject of the verb, the thing that does the devouring. It stands for the shameful idolatry itself. The idols promised plenty and brought disgrace. Jeremiah has already pictured Israel ashamed like a thief who is caught, when the worship of wood and stone is exposed (Jeremiah 2:26–27). Hosea says the same of priests who sinned, that God would change their glory into shame (Hosea 4:7).

“Devoured” is ʼâkal, to eat, and figuratively to devour or consume. “The labour of our fathers” uses yᵉgîyaʻ, the product of toil, everything earlier generations had worked hard to build. “From our youth” means from the nation’s earliest days. So the verse says that the shameful thing has been eating up Israel’s inheritance for as long as Israel has existed.

The list climbs from goods to people. Flocks of sheep and goats and herds of cattle were the wealth and livelihood of a farming people. Then come “their sons and their daughters”, the greatest loss of all. That may mean children literally sacrificed to idols, which Jeremiah condemns at Tophet (Jeremiah 7:31), children lost to the war and famine of God’s judgment, or the young carried off in the coming exile. On any of these readings the nation’s future was being consumed.

Idolatry in Jeremiah’s day included rites that mixed the LORD’s worship with Canaanite practice, among them ritual prostitution and even the sacrifice of children. This is what Moses warned of in the curses of the covenant (Deuteronomy 28), and the LORD had said that the iniquity of fathers would reach their children (Exodus 34:7). Those who make idols become like them (Psalm 115:4–8), and Paul describes the same exchange of God’s glory for images (Romans 1:21–25).

“We lie down in our shame, and our confusion covereth us: for we have sinned against the LORD our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even unto this day, and have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God.” The confession ends with its plainest words.

“Lie down” is shâkab, the ordinary word for lying down. Shame, bôsheth again, has become the ground they lie on. “Confusion” is kᵉlimmâh, which means shame, dishonour and disgrace, and it “covereth” them, from kâçâh, to cover, like a garment drawn over them. The two words together describe a people whose disgrace has settled on them and covers them on every side.

Then comes the cause, and the people state it without excuse: “for we have sinned against the LORD our God”. The verb châṭâʼ means to miss the mark, and so to sin, to fall short of God’s righteous will. They say who they sinned against, the LORD who is their own God. Their suffering is the just result of what they have done.

“We and our fathers” (ʼâb), “from our youth (nâʻûwr) even unto this day (yôwm)”: the sin is old and handed down. It began early in the nation’s history and has run on to the very day Jeremiah speaks. Moses had warned that idolatry would scatter them among the nations (Deuteronomy 4:25–28), and the law had described the fear and wasting away of a disobedient people in their enemies’ lands (Leviticus 26:36–39).

The last clause names the heart of it: they “have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God”. To obey is shâmaʻ, to hear, and so to listen and to heed, and the voice is qôwl. Listening to God’s voice and doing what he said was the very life of the covenant, and refusing to listen was the breach that led to all the rest. The confession says “the LORD our God” twice in one verse, and with it the people own both their sin and their God.

God’s question in verse 19, “How shall I put thee among the children?”, is answered in Jesus Christ. People estranged from God by sin could only call him Father through a mediator, and the eternal Son became that mediator. “But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name” (John 1:12). God sent his Son so that we might receive the adoption of sons (Galatians 4:4–7), and “ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15). The pleasant land and goodly heritage become every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ (Ephesians 1:3–14), an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, reserved in heaven (1 Peter 1:3–4).

Jeremiah himself looks forward to a new covenant in which God writes his law on his people’s hearts, so that all of them know him (Jeremiah 31:31–34). Hebrews says that this covenant is established in Christ on better promises (Hebrews 8:6–13), and so the people who once forgot the LORD are given hearts that know him. Jesus is the faithful Bridegroom who redeems an unfaithful bride, and the story ends at the marriage of the Lamb (Revelation 19:7).

The healing of verse 22 comes through the cross. God “hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Sin entered the world through one man (Romans 5:12), and in Christ God has forgiven our trespasses and blotted out what stood against us (Colossians 2:13–14). “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). Jesus still calls the weary and burdened to come to him (Matthew 11:28), and he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

The confession of verse 23 finds its fullest form in him. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6), and Peter preached that there is salvation in no other name (Acts 4:12). All God’s promises are yes and amen in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20). The worship once offered on the high places gives way to worship in spirit and in truth (John 4:23–24).

The shame of verses 24 and 25 was carried by Christ, who “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame” (Hebrews 12:2), and so “Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed” (Romans 10:11). Through his blood we have boldness to enter God’s presence with a true heart (Hebrews 10:19–22), and his Spirit enables us to hear and keep what he says (John 14:15).

This passage shows God speaking first. Before Israel says a word of confession, he has already said what he wants: to be called Father, to give his children an inheritance, to heal their backsliding. He feels their unfaithfulness as a husband does, and he still calls them his children. He hears weeping from the very hills where they betrayed him, and he answers it with a promise.

The passage also gives us the words of return. “Behold, we come unto thee; for thou art the LORD our God.” “Truly in the LORD our God is the salvation of Israel.” “We have sinned against the LORD our God.” These are words a backslider can pray. God’s people have prayed them for centuries, and the Father who wrote them into Scripture is the one who waits to hear them. In Christ the question “How shall I put thee among the children?” has its answer, and whoever comes may call him “My father”.