Jeremiah 3:17

They shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord. — Up to Jeremiah’s time that title, “the throne of God,” though the language of the Old Testament had referred it to the “heavens” (Psalms 11:4; Psalms 103:19), had probably been applied, in popular language, to the ark where the Lord “dwelt between the cherubim” (1 Samuel 4:4; 2 Kings 19:15). The prophet extends it to the whole city, in that future of which he was doubtless thinking. To him, as to Micah (Micah 4:1) and Isaiah (Isaiah 2:1), there came a vision of the holy city as the centre of the divine Kingdom. It was not given to him to see what even the Apostles were slow to understand, that there is no holy city upon earth, and that his hopes would only be fulfilled in the heavenly Jerusalem which is the Church or family of God.

The imagination. — Better, stubbornness, as in the margin.