And when she had done all these things, I said: Return to me, and she did not return. And her treacherous sister Juda saw,

“In addition to these things, "when people fall, do they not rise again? If one turns away, does he not return?" Why, then, is the virgin "turned away with a stubborn revolting," even though she heard Christ, her spouse, saying through Jeremiah, "And when she had committed all these fornications, I said, 'Return to me, and she did not return'?" "Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of the daughter of my people not been restored?" Indeed, many safeguards against evil would you find in the divine Scripture and many remedies which from destruction bring salvation—the mysteries of death and resurrection, the words of the terrible judgment and everlasting punishment, the doctrines of repentance and the forgiveness of sin, those innumerable examples of conversion, the drachma, the sheep, the son who spent his livelihood with harlots, was lost and found, was dead and alive again. Let us use these safeguards against evil. Through them, let us heal our soul.”

“He directs his speech to the city, in this way, too, being minded to correct his hearers, and said, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!" What is meant by this repetition? This is the manner of one pitying her and gently loving her. She is like a woman who is beloved. He always loved her indeed, yet she has despised him who loved her. Therefore at the point of being punished, he pleads, being now about to inflict the punishment. This he does also in the prophets, using these words, "I said, 'she will return to me,' but she did not return."”

“And I said through My prophets, Amos and Hosea son of Beeri and the other prophets, “You shall return to Me.” And her treacherous sister Judah saw it i.e., saw all this. The appellation “treacherous” is harsher than “backsliding.” Israel, since they were the first to sin, and they did not see any retribution from which to learn and to repent, are called “backsliding.” Judah, who saw that these went in exile and did not receive correction, are called “treacherous.””

“Here he calls them back by the example of the ten tribes; and concerning this he does three things. First, he sets forth the example with respect to the fault of idolatry: "she went away by herself" — following her own impulses, not my precepts; and of disobedience: "and I said." 4 Kings 17: "they made for themselves statues and groves on every high hill and under every leafy tree, and they burned incense there upon altars after the manner of the nations." And as to the punishment, which became known to them: "and the treacherous sister saw" — because they arose from the same fathers. "I would have given her a bill": it preserves the likeness of the harlot, in whom foulness is found. But on the contrary, Isaiah 50: "what is this bill of divorce?" And it must be said that God does not send anyone away, so far as it pertains to himself; but man, sinning, sends him away: hence in the same place: "you were sold for your iniquities, and for your crimes I sent away your mother." Second, he sets forth the contempt: "and her treacherous sister Judah did not fear." "With the stone" — that is, with the stone idol. 4 Kings 17: "but neither did Judah himself keep the commandments of the Lord his God; but he erred, and walked in the errors of Israel which he had wrought." Third, he aggravates the guilt: "and the Lord said to me: she has justified" — comparatively, because the ten tribes had not seen the punishment of the others, nor were they corrected. Ezekiel 16: "you have justified your sisters in all your abominations which you have wrought."”

“And I said, after she had done these things,.... All these idolatries, in the several places mentioned, after she had repeated them over and over; the Lord sent to them by the Prophets Hosea, Amos, Micah, and others, who prophesied before the captivity of the ten tribes, and entreated them, saying, turn unto me: to my worship, as the Targum; from their idols, to him the living God; they were not without admonitions, exhortations, and declarations of grace, and so were without excuse: but she returned not; to fear and serve the Lord, but remained in idolatry, obstinate and inflexible: and her treacherous sister Judah saw it; her treachery and breach of covenant, as the Septuagint, Syriac, and Arabic versions add, for explanation sake; Judah, or the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin, and who were allied to the ten tribes by birth and by religion, and equally treacherous to God, the husband of them both, saw all the idolatry of Israel, and the aggravations of it, and what followed upon it, namely, their captivity in Babylon, yet did not learn and take warning hereby.”

“And I said, sc. to myself, i.e., I thought. A speaking by the prophets (Rashi) is not to be thought of; for it is no summons, turn again to me, but only the thought, they will return. It is true that God caused backsliding Israel to be ever called again to repentance by the prophets, yet without effect. Meantime, however, no reference is made to what God did in this connection, only Israel's behaviour towards the Lord being here kept in view. The Chet. ותּראה is the later usage; the Keri substitutes the regular contracted form ותּרא. The object, it (the whoredom of Israel), may be gathered from what precedes. Jer 3:8 Many commentators have taken objection to the וארא, because the sentence, "I saw that I had therefore given Israel a bill of divorce," is as little intelligible as "and the faithless Judah saw it, and I saw it, for," etc. Thus e.g., Graf, who proposes with Ew. and Syr. to read ותּרא, "and she saw," or with Jerome to omit the word from the text. To this we may add, that either the change or the omission destroys the natural relation to one another of the clauses. In either case we would have this connection: "and the faithless one, her sister Judah, saw that, because the backslider Israel had committed adultery, I had put her away...yet the faithless one feared not." But thus the gist of the thing, what Judah saw, namely, the repudiation of Israel, would be related but cursorily in a subordinate clause, and the 7th verse would be shortened into a half verse; while, on the other hand, the 8th verse would be burdened with an unnaturally long protasis. Ros. is right in declaring any change to be unnecessary, provided the two halves of Jer 3:7 and Jer 3:8 are connected in this sense: vidi quod quum adulteram Israelitidem dimiseram, tamen non timeret ejus perfida soror Juda. If we compare Jer 3:7 and Jer 3:8 together, the correspondence between the two comes clearly out. In the first half of either verse Israel is spoken of, in the second Judah; while as to Israel, both verses state how God regarded the conduct of Israel, and as to Judah, how it observed and imitated Israel's conduct. וארא corresponds to ואמר in Jer 3:7. God thought the backsliding Israel will repent, and it did not, and this Judah saw. Thus, then, God saw that even the repudiation of the backsliding Israel for her adultery incited no fear in Judah, but Judah went and did whoredom like Israel. The true sense of Jer 3:8 is rendered obscure or difficult by the external co-ordination to one another of the two thoughts, that God has rejected Israel just because it has committed adultery, and, that Judah nevertheless feared not; the second thought being introduced by Vav. In reality, however, the first should be subordinated to the second thus: that although I had to reject Israel, Judah yet feared not. What God saw is not the adultery and rejection or divorce of Israel, but that Judah nevertheless had no fear in committing and persisting in the self-same sin. The כּי belongs properly to לא יראה, but this relation is obscured by the length of the prefixed grounding clause, and so לא יראה is introduced by ,על־כּל־אדות וגו' .ו yb decud literally: that for all the reasons, because the backslider had committed adultery, I put her away and gave her a bill of divorce; yet the faithless Judah feared not. In plain English: that, in spite of all my putting away the backsliding Israel, and my giving her...because she had committed adultery, yet the faithless Judah feared not. On ספר כּריתוּת, cf. Deu 24:1, Deu 24:3. Jer 3:9 In Jer 3:9 Judah's fornication with the false gods is further described. Here מקּל זנוּתהּ ereH is rather stumbling, since ob vocem scortationis cannot well be simply tantamount to ob famosam scortationem; for קול, voice, tone, sound, din, noise, is distinct from שׁם or שׁמע, fame, rumour. All ancient translators have taken קל from קלל, as being formed analogously to עז ,תּם ,חם; and a Masoretic note finds in the defective spelling קל an indication of the meaning levitas. Yet we occasionally find קול, vox, written defectively, e.g., Exo 4:8; Gen 27:22; Gen 45:16. And the derivation from קלל gives no very suitable sense; neither lightness nor despisedness is a proper predicate for whoredom, by which the land is polluted; only shame or shameful would suit, as it is put by Ew. and Graf. But there is no evidence from the usage of the language that קל has the meaning of קלון. Yet more inadmissible is the conjecture of J. D. Mich., adopted by Hitz., that of reading מקּל gnidaer fo taht, stock, for מקּל, a stock being the object of her unchastity; in support of which, reference is unfairly made to Hos 4:12. For there the matter in hand is rhabdomancy, with which the present passage has evidently nothing to do. The case standing thus, we adhere to the usual meaning of קל: for the noise or din of her whoredom, not, for her crying whoredom (de Wette). Jeremiah makes use of this epithet to point out the open riotous orgies of idolatry. תּחנף is neither used in the active signification of desecrating, nor is it to be pointed ותּחנף (Hiph.). On the last clause cf. Jer 2:27. Jer 3:10 But even with all this, i.e., in spite of this deep degradation in idolatry, Judah returned not to God sincerely, but in hypocritical wise. "And yet with all this," Ros., following Rashi, refers to the judgment that had fallen on Israel (Jer 3:8); but this is too remote. The words can bear reference only to that which immediately precedes: even in view of all these sinful horrors the returning was not "from the whole heart," i.e., did not proceed from a sincere heart, but in falsehood and hypocrisy. For (the returning being that which began with the abolition of idolatrous public worship in Josiah's reformation) the people had returned outwardly to the worship of Jahveh in the temple, but at heart they still calve to the idols. Although Josiah had put an end to the idol-worship, and though the people too, in the enthusiasm for the service of Jahveh, awakened by the solemn celebration of the passover, had broken in pieces the images and altars of the false gods throughout the land, yet there was imminent danger that the people, alienated in heart from the living God, should take the suppression of open idolatry for a true return to God, and, vainly admiring themselves, should look upon themselves as righteous and pious. Against this delusion the prophet takes his stand.”