Jeremiah 3:21

A voice was heard: here the prophet seems to express Israel's repentance and turning to God; and that which they were at present engaging themselves in; (the word being participial, and in the present tense;) delivered in a prophetical style, as that in Jeremiah 31:15; and that not only out of a sense of their judgments that they were under, but chiefly of their sins they were guilty of, and the pardon of which they were now begging. which is intimated by weeping and supplication. Upon the high places, viz. that their cry might be the more public, both open and loud, Jeremiah 22:20 Matthew 10:27; possibly alluding to the usual practice of praying on the tops of houses in great calamities, Isaiah 15:3, Isaiah 22:1 Jeremiah 7:29 1, Weeping and supplications; or rather, weeping supplications; showing the intenseness of it; praying in weeping, and weeping in prayer, Malachi 12:10, like Peter's weeping, Matthew 26:75. Of the children of Israel; the end of which might be to provoke Judah also to repentance, or otherwise to charge upon them their stupidity, and threaten them with the like judgments, if they would not return upon Israel's example. They have perverted their way, and they have forgotten the Lord their God: this expresseth rather the matter of their prayer than the cause of it, Lamentations 5:16, drawn chiefly from their sins, as also from their calamities.