Albert Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible - Jeremiah 3:9
Lightness - Others render as in the margin.Defiled - Rather, profaned. The land especially consecrated to Yahweh’s service was treated by Judah as a common land. read more
Lightness - Others render as in the margin.Defiled - Rather, profaned. The land especially consecrated to Yahweh’s service was treated by Judah as a common land. read more
Her treacherous sister Judith - These words are a sort of refrain, thrice Jeremiah 3:7-8, Jeremiah 3:10 repeated before God finally pronounces Judah more culpable than Israel. read more
Hath justified herself - Judah had had the benefit of the warning given by Israel’s example. Both abandon Yahweh’s service for idolatry, but Israel is simply “apostate,” Judah is also false.The verse is important,(1) as accounting for the destruction of Jerusalem so soon after the pious reign of Josiah. Manasseh’s crimes had defiled the land, but it was by rejecting the reforms of Josiah that the people finally profaned it, and sealed their doom:(2) As showing that it is not by the acts of its... read more
Jeremiah 3:6 . Then the Lord said unto me “Here begins an entire new section, or distinct prophecy, which is continued to the end of the sixth chapter. It consists of two distinct parts. The first part contains a complaint against Judah for having exceeded the guilt of her sister Israel, whom God had already cast off for her idolatrous apostacy, Jeremiah 3:6-12. The prophet is hereupon sent to announce to Israel the promise of pardon upon her repentance, and the hopes of a glorious... read more
Jeremiah 3:7. After she had done all these things For which she might justly have been abandoned; I said, Turn thou unto me Namely, and I will receive thee. Though they had forsaken both the house of David and the house of Aaron, who both had their authority from God without dispute, yet God sent his prophets among them to call them to return to him, that is, to the worship of him only, not insisting so much upon their return to the house of David as to that of Aaron. We do not read that... read more
Jeremiah 3:8. And I saw As if he had said, That which others discerned not, I saw perfectly; namely, both her hypocrisy and her incorrigibleness, notwithstanding what had befallen Israel, whose correction should have instructed and reformed her. When for all the causes The various idolatries and other sins, for which I had given her That is, Israel; a bill of divorce Delivered her up into the hands of the Assyrians, and thereby taken from her the title of being my church; yet her... read more
Jeremiah 3:9-10. And through the lightness of her whoredom “By this phrase,” says Blaney, “I take to be meant, that she was not nice in the choice of the objects, but was ready to prostitute herself to all that came in her way; that is, she eagerly fell in with all kinds of idolatrous worship indiscriminately, descending so low as to images of wood and stone.” That she defiled the land Brought the whole land under the guilt of idolatry. Yet for all this Though God saw what she did, and... read more
Jeremiah 3:11. And the Lord said unto me, &c. The case of these sister kingdoms is here compared, and judgment given upon the comparison. Israel hath justified herself more than Judah Hebrew, צדקה נפשׁה , hath justified her soul: so the LXX. εδικαιωσε την ψυχην , and the Vulgate. The meaning is, that of the two, Judah was the more guilty, because, though Israel’s sins were more numerous, and their idolatry had continued longer, yet in Judah that and other sins were more heinous,... read more
Need for true repentance (3:6-18)King Josiah had tried to reform Judah, but because people had not changed inwardly, the reformation affected only the external forms of religion. Looking from God’s viewpoint, Jeremiah calls the people’s so-called repentance a pretence (see v. 10). Judah had seen her sister nation Israel divorced from God and sent into captivity because of her spiritual adultery, but Israel’s experience taught her nothing. She is now doing what Israel did. In accepting Josiah’s... read more
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible - Jeremiah 3:8
Rather, “And I saw” that because apostate “Israel” had “committed adultery, I had put her away, and given her” the writing of her divorcement, “yet” false “Judah her sister feared not.”...The expression, “For all the causes whereby,” is probably the actual formula with which writings of divorcement commenced. read more