Jeremiah 3

In verse 1, the LORD compares the relationship between Him and Jerusalem to that of an earthly marriage in which a husband divorces his wife. Will that husband return to her? The answer is “no” if she has become the wife of another man (Deu 24:1-4). The LORD did not divorce Jerusalem, but she herself left. However, she is seen as a wife sent away and her husband is not allowed to return to her, for the land would be completely polluted as a result. Indeed, she has made the return impossible by her harlotry with many lovers.

The LORD presents her behavior to Jerusalem (verse 2). Let her look around. Is there any place to be found where she has not indulged in harlotry? She has shamelessly sat down along the roads to offer herself as a harlot to every passerby (cf. Gen 38:14-15; Eze 16:25; Pro 7:12-15). She sits there, like an Arab in the desert offering his merchandise to passersby. An Arab lives in total disregard of boundaries. If there is no trade, there is always something to loot. This is how Jerusalem lives. She is only out for harlotry. By her harlotry and all additional evil, she has polluted the whole land. Her sins lie like a covering over the land.

The LORD withheld the showers to discipline her and make her return to Him, confessing her unfaithfulness (verse 3; Lev 26:9; Deu 28:23-24; 1Kgs 17:1). He wants her to feel how empty a life is that takes place outside of fellowship with Him. However, she no longer has a sense of what is good. She has the forehead of a harlot, who is shamelessly engaged and uncorrectable for her repugnant behavior. In pride, she carries on and takes no notice of the LORD. She refuses to acknowledge and break with sin.

The LORD reminds them that they called to Him as “my Father” (verse 4). He says this so that in Him they will acknowledge their origin, in the consciousness that by serving idols they have separated themselves from Him, their origin. He adds that they will acknowledge Him as “the friend” of their youth. This means that they will acknowledge that they have rejected Him as Friend and have begun to serve idols.

But the LORD knows how they think about Him in their heart. Even if they would come to Him and call Him “my Father” and confess Him as “the friend” of their youth, they do that without any confession of their sins. They appeal to His goodness, as the good God Who will accept His people again anyway (verse 5), but they do it in hypocrisy.

They believe that the good God will leave His anger someday. Surely He will not always remain indignant toward them, will He? Their language is flattering, so they speak, but their actions are evil. They manage to speak piously and act sinfully. The LORD sees through that and tells them so clearly. In saying, “you have had your way”, we hear the LORD’s amazement at their appalling and incorrigibly insolent attitude. We would say: ‘Do you need to say another word about that?’ But where we stop, God continues in patience and grace. That is an attitude that should amaze us.

This is what Jeremiah as a young man has to say to God’s people. Here his first message ends with the main topics summarized:
1. Israel is guilty of terrible sins.
2. The LORD is punishing His people.
3. In times of need, they want the LORD to help them.
4. However, they have no true repentance.

Here begins a new prophecy that continues through to Jeremiah 6:30. This one is more comprehensive than the previous one, Jeremiah 2:1-3:5. It is spoken “in the days of Josiah the king” (verse 6). By then the ten tribes had been scattered for many decades, carried away by the Assyrians. In what period of King Josiah’s reign we are, is not told here. We are told in more detail about forsaking the LORD by both the northern ten tribe realm and the southern two tribe realm. Yet in between we find wonderful promises of restoration and blessing after their repentance and that the goodness of the LORD will still lead them, even if through the deepest tribulation.

The LORD asks Jeremiah if he has seen “what faithless Israel did”. A prophet must be a keen observer and see what the LORD sees. The LORD tells him that He has seen what faithless Israel, the ten tribes, have done, how they have committed harlotry everywhere. He also tells Jeremiah what He said to her after all her faithlessness (verse 7). He called her to return to Him. And did she? No, she didn’t.

What Israel has done and what the LORD has therefore done to faithless Israel has been observed by Judah, whom the LORD here calls “her treacherous sister Judah”. Has Israel’s behavior and what the LORD has done to her been a warning to Judah (verse 8)? No, Judah has not been warned by Israel’s example. The LORD has had to conclude that His sending Israel away has made no impression on Judah. Judah was not frightened by it, but on the contrary went and was a harlot also.

They are two sisters. The LORD has been in a marriage relationship with both of them. The older sister, Israel, He divorced and gave her a writ of divorce. Judah should have learned a lesson from that. Judah should have seen and taken to heart what happened to Israel, in the judgment God had to bring upon them.

It is important that we be warned by what we see in the lives of other believers (cf. 1Cor 10:6,11). If we do not learn from the follies of others, we are even greater fools than they are. We are no better and should not imagine that we are not as bad as those others. Let us not think that we know our limits.

We can say in pride that we know how much we can drink without getting drunk or how fast we can drive without becoming reckless. With this attitude, we have made our self-control an idol. It is better to be convinced that we are weak and take to heart the warning: “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall” (1Cor 10:12).

Because of Judah’s behavior, the holy land, the land of God, has been polluted. For Judah commits “adultery with stones and trees” (verse 9). Judah worships matter and puts his trust in it, the making of human hands. What he confesses with his mouth is pretense (verse 10). His heart is not right before God. That is what the LORD sees. He knows the heart. Nothing is hidden from Him, not even the deepest motives. “All things are open and laid bare” to His eyes (Heb 4:13).

Judah pretends to worship God, but God judges Judah to be even worse than Israel (verse 11; Eze 23:11). Compared to Judah, Israel even seems more righteous than Judah. Israel is called “faithless Israel” and Judah is called “treacherous Judah”. To become faithless is bad. It is giving up a privileged position. Treacherousness is even worse. It is despising a privileged relationship. When Israel became faithless, they did not yet know what the judgment would be. They had no example of it. Judah does. They have seen with Israel what judgment means, but they nevertheless have not repented. To all the sins of Israel, Judah adds that of hypocrisy.

How is the church doing? Has she remained faithful? Paul speaks to the Corinthians about being concerned that the church has been “led astray from the simplicity and purity [of devotion] to Christ” (2Cor 11:3). We see in professing Christianity how much idolatry has entered. Christ has long ceased to be the sole object of faith. Decay and apostasy are taking on ever more gross forms. With an appeal to the Bible, the most horrible sins are justified. Judgment is set far off, if one believes in it at all.

Following the observation that Israel seems more righteous than Judah, the LORD instructs Jeremiah to proclaim His words toward the north (verse 12). There is a remnant of the ten tribes there. Several years ago, King Hezekiah invited them to the Passover. Many laughed at him, but some came anyway (2Chr 30:1,10-11). Now the LORD offers them to return to Him. He makes it attractive to them by presenting Himself to them as “gracious”. They may also count on Him not maintaining His anger forever when they come. What an impressive invitation from a God full of grace!

It is as if the LORD is giving them another chance to return to Him and be blessed. They only have to acknowledge their iniquity (verse 13). For they have transgressed against Him, the LORD their God. God cannot tolerate that. In their rebellion, they have gone in all directions to commit their abominable idolatry, wherever they go. They do this while not listening to His voice. Their behavior is in direct opposition to His will.

He would like them to return to Him. After all, He is “a master” to them, or: He married them (Dutch Translation [Darby Translation: ‘for I am a husband unto you’]). In these words, the passionate desire for their return to Him, a loving God, is evident. He calls them “faithless” and yet at the same time “sons”. Besides being in a relationship of a Father to His sons, He is also in a marriage relationship, that is, a covenant relationship, with them. They have given up both relationships, but He, for His part, does not want to give up those relationships. Therefore, He calls them to return to Him.

Because He has married them, He will not completely cast them out. He will take “one from a city and two from a family”, that is, He will take a remnant to Himself and enter into the marriage bond with it. Here and in the following verses something shines through of the situation in the realm of peace. Once back in the land, the LORD will give them God-fearing leaders, shepherds after His heart. These are shepherds who resemble the true Shepherd, the great Son of David. David is “a man after His own heart” (1Sam 13:14b; Acts 13:22), the Lord Jesus is that in a perfect sense. These shepherds, as under-shepherds, will represent the Lord Jesus as the Shepherd of His people (verse 15). They will feed the people “on knowledge and understanding” (cf. Psa 78:70-72).

The people will then have entered into the blessing of the realm of peace. The expression “in those days” indicates this. That expression often looks ahead to the time of the realm of peace and the time immediately preceding it. They will multiply and increase in the land (cf. Gen 1:28). The ark will no longer be needed because He of Whom the ark speaks, Christ, the Messiah, will be in their midst (verse 16).

That the ark will no longer be needed is a bold assumption for an Old Testament prophet. The ark is the center of the religious life of God’s people and the place where the high priest sacrifices the blood on the day of atonement. But the ark will no longer be needed as a symbol of God’s presence in the midst of the people, because the glory of the LORD Himself will dwell in the midst of His people. We see the same thing in Ezekiel’s temple which will be in Jerusalem in the realm of peace (Ezekiel 40-43). In that temple there is also no ark, because the glory of the LORD dwells in the temple. With that temple He also connects His throne (Eze 43:7a).

The first time the ark is mentioned in the Bible is in the design of the tabernacle shown to Moses (Exo 25:10-22). We see that the ark is also given its place in Solomon’s temple (1Kgs 8:6). The last historical mention we have, is during the reign of King Josiah (2Chr 35:3). Probably the ark was taken to Babylon along with all the other objects of the temple. Remarkably, it is not mentioned in a list of all that is carried away to Babylon (Jer 52:17-23). It was lost in 586 BC and never found or replaced.

The ark is the throne of the LORD (1Sam 4:4a; 2Kgs 19:15). In the future, “at that time” (verse 17; verse 16), all of “Jerusalem” will be the new “Throne of the LORD” and not just the ark (Eze 48:35b). The city will bear the marks of His government. Therefore, all nations will go there and gather together (Isa 2:2-3; 56:6-8; 60:11-14; Mic 4:1-2). They will come to the Name of the LORD, which is most strongly associated with Jerusalem. His throne and His Name, His government and His Person are the center and foundation of the realm of peace. The nations will acknowledge that. In the past, their lives have consisted of walking after their hardened, wicked hearts. That will be over. They have in Him a totally new goal in their lives.

Judah will return to the land “in those days” along with the remnant of Israel (verse 18; Mic 2:12). Here Jeremiah speaks of a return of Judah, meaning that Judah will also be taken out of the land. They are coming from the north, from the direction from which their enemies came, both Assyria and Babylon, and carried them away. In the realm of peace, the two realms will be reunited and they will be one people (Eze 37:16-17). They will dwell in the land, according to the promises the LORD made to the fathers, that they would possess as an inheritance.

In these verses, the intention and desire of God and the treacherousness of the people are contrasted. God desired to make His people His sons and to have them dwell in “a pleasant land”, “the most beautiful inheritance of the nations” (verse 19). He wanted to hear from them a response that He could expect, a response of gratitude, love and faithfulness. He wanted them to cry out to Him “my Father” (cf. Isa 64:8a) and not to turn away from following Him.

But instead, the people dealt treacherously with Him (verse 20). It does not even say that the people began to serve other gods. The emphasis is on the fact that despite so much love from the LORD, they became unfaithful to Him and did not stay with Him. That is a great sorrow for the LORD.

The voice of supplications “is heard on the bare heights”, which are the places where the people practice idolatry (verse 21; verse 2). Because their departing from the LORD has not produced the expected results, they now weep and supplicate. God’s response to this is one of wonderful grace. He calls on His “faithless sons” to return (verse 22a). If they do, He can heal their faithlessness. Those who return to the LORD with genuine repentance for their sins will have no desire to return to the mire of sin.

Jeremiah confesses the condition of the people, with whom he makes himself one. Through Jeremiah’s mouth the people say they are coming to Him and acknowledge that He is the LORD their God (verse 22b). They also acknowledge that they have sought their salvation in vain from the idols on the hills and the multitudes of the mountains (verse 23). Their salvation, the salvation of Israel, is only in the LORD their God.

The people see that from their youth they have brought shame upon themselves by sinning against the LORD (verses 24-25). They confess the sin of their fathers and also their own, “we and our fathers”. There is no longer any excuse, no attempt to hide or justify their sins. They acknowledge that the cause is in not listening to the voice of the LORD their God.

When we look back, we never regret what we did right. We only regret when we look back at the wrong things we did (cf. Rom 6:21). These are things that, when they were before us, when we looked at them, seemed attractive to do.