Jeremiah 3:1

Jeremiah 3:1-5. Israel's faithlessness towards her Spouse

1. They say The Hebrew is simply saying. Either the opening words of Jeremiah 3:6 have been displaced and should stand here, or a similar introductory clause has accidentally dropped out. The connexion of thought is: the Lord refuses to recognise either Egypt or Assyria as the lawful spouse of His people, at the same time saying that as they have chosen to forsake Him for them, He will act in accordance with the law of divorce and will refuse to receive Israel again.

shall he return unto her again? According to Deuteronomy 24:1-4, when a woman left her husband in accordance with a bill of divorce and was married to another, even a bill of divorce given her by her new husband did not enable the former one to take her back. As the illustration applies to Israel's return to Jehovah, not His to her, there is something to be said for the LXX's reading, viz. Shall she indeed return to him?The form of the MT. has been accounted for as a reference to Deut. as above, although we cannot say that the Deuteronomic code on the matter was as yet in operation. Moreover the case contemplated in that passage is one of divorce, and Israel had not been divorced. In the time of Saul the marriageof a divorced woman to a second husband did not preclude her from returning to the former one (see 1Sa 25:44; 2 Samuel 3:14 f.). The prophet, however, may be here thinking of the contraction of an illegitimate union by a divorced woman. "His argument is apparently this: If a man divorces his wife and she lives with another man, how can her first husband take her back, defiled as she is for him? But Judah's case is still worse, for she has not been divorced, and has contracted an adulterous union not with one lover but with many." Pe.

yet return and thinkest thou to return (as mg.). An expression of surprise. It is impossible surely to play fast and loose with God in such a matter a thing forbidden even in human affairs.