They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man’s, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the LORD.
Many regard this verse as connected with the last, and thus read them connectedly, “God hates false confidences, because he says, “etc. But this seems not to me to be suitable; for Jeremiah brings before us here a new subject, — that God seeks to be reconciled to his people, according to what a husband does, who desires to receive into favor an unchaste wife...
These verses some make to belong to the sermon in the foregoing chapter, and they open a door of hope to those who receive the conviction of the reproofs we had there; God wounds that he may heal. Now observe here, I. How basely this people had forsaken God and gone a whoring from him. The charge runs very high here. 1. They had multiplied their idols and their idolatries.
Commenting on Jeremiah 3:1-5
They say, if a man put away his wife,.... Or, "saying" (w); wherefore some connect those words with the last verse of the preceding chapter, as if they were a continuation of what the Lord had been there saying, that he would reject their confidences; so Kimchi; but they seem rather to begin a new section, or a paragraph, with what were commonly said among...