Jer 3:5-6 | KingComments | STEP | In , 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 ( ). 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 to Jerusalem her behavior ( ). 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. ; ; ). She sits there like an Arab in the desert offering his merchandise to passersby. An Arab lives in total unboundedness. 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 ( ; ; ; ). 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 they called to Him as “my Father” ( ). 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 the idols. But the LORD knows how they think about Him in their heart. Even if they would come to Him and say “my Father” to Him and confess Him as “the friend” of their youth, they do that without any confession of their sins. They do appeal to His goodness, as the good God Who will accept His people again anyway ( ), but they do it in hypocrisy. They believe that the good God will leave His anger some day. 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.

‏ Jeremiah 3:5-6

Judah, the Faithless Wife

In Jer 3:1, 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 to Jerusalem her behavior (Jer 3:2). 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 unboundedness. 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 (Jer 3:3; 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 they called to Him as “my Father” (Jer 3:4). 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 the idols.

But the LORD knows how they think about Him in their heart. Even if they would come to Him and say “my Father” to Him and confess Him as “the friend” of their youth, they do that without any confession of their sins. They do appeal to His goodness, as the good God Who will accept His people again anyway (Jer 3:5), but they do it in hypocrisy.

They believe that the good God will leave His anger some day. 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.

Judah Is Worse Than Israel

Here begins a new prophecy that continues through 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” (Jer 3:6). 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 (Jer 3:7). 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 (Jer 3:8)? 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. With both of them the LORD has been in a marriage relationship. The older sister, Israel, He divorced, with 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 do know our limits.

We can say in pride that we do know how much we can drink without getting drunk or how fast we can drive without becoming reckless. Then 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 stone and trees” (Jer 3:9). Judah worships matter and puts his trust in it, the making of human hands. What he confesses with his mouth is pretense (Jer 3:10). 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 (Jer 3:11; 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.