Jeremiah 3:14

"Return, O backsliding children, saith Jehovah; for I am a husband unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion. And I will give you shepherds according to my heart, who shall feed you with knowledge and understanding. And it shall come to pass when ye are multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, saith Jehovah, they shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of Jehovah; neither shall it come to mind; neither shall they remember it; neither shall they miss it; neither shall it be made any more. At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of Jehovah; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it; to the name of Jehovah, to Jerusalem: neither shall they walk any more after the stubbornness of their evil heart. In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel, and they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I gave for an inheritance unto your fathers."

"One of a city, two of a family ..." (Jeremiah 3:14). Here surfaces again the doctrine of the "righteous remnant" of Israel as stressed throughout both Isaiah and Jeremiah. "Out of God's purifying judgment upon his apostate people shall come a few refined souls. They will be gathered and shall constitute the New Israel, blessed of God (Romans 11:5).[17]

"They shall say no more, The ark of the covenant ..." (Jeremiah 3:16b). "This shows that the old economy was to be dissolved. The old covenant, of which the ark was a central feature, was to give way to another - a preview of 31:31-35."[18] Concurring in this view are the remarks of Cheyne: "In the Messianic period ... the ark would no longer be thought of."[19]

"In those days ... at that time ... in those days ..." (Jeremiah 3:16-18). All such expressions, including "in the last day," "in the latter times," etc., are indications that the times of the Messiah are intended. These, as Cook stated, "were a regular formula for the time of Christ's coming when all the nation's hopes would be fulfilled."[20]

"Jerusalem the throne of Jehovah ..." (Jeremiah 3:18). "Jehovah's throne shall not be the ark, but Jerusalem, the Christian Church (Revelation 21:2; Galatians 4:26)."[21] It might be readily admitted that neither Jeremiah nor the people who received his prophecy for the first time fully understood all that was involved in these promises; but even if they should have misunderstood, thinking that there would be some kind of a return to the literal land of Palestine, the message would nevertheless have been a very effective message for them.

"The Messianic reference in this chapter is the ruling one. The fulfillment of these promises is carried on during the lives of the apostles of Christ and is carried on throughout the whole history of the Church, and attains its completion in the final conversion of Israel."[22]

Keil's expectation of the "final conversion of Israel," projected to take place at the end of the current dispensation, and considered by some to be a salient feature of the so-called Millennium is a view held by many scholars; but it is one which this writer has never accepted. That such a thing indeed may be possible we cannot deny; but we do deny that the Bible declares any such thing as an event that God has promised will occur.

Whether or not any such thing as a wholesale conversion of racial Israel will ever take place is left as an open and undecided question in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the Old Testament, it must be remembered that Jonah was not placated by the conversion of Nineveh, but that the sacred narrative rings down the curtain upon him still angry, still pouting, still unwilling to appreciate what God did.

In the New Testament, in the parable of the prodigal, it will be remembered that the narrative closes with the father, still pleading, still waiting, still inviting the elder brother to share in the feast, but with the elder brother still angry, still refusing to come in. Of course, both Jonah and the elder brother constitute divine presentations of the way it is with racial Israel to this very day; and we have observed nothing whatever that adds any more favorable details to the picture.

Some commentators think they find the old land promise to Abraham in this chapter and speak confidently of the time when racial Israel shall again be in Palestine with the Lord reigning on a throne in Jerusalem. We are absolutely certain that nothing of this kind is in the chapter or anywhere else in the Word of God. Yes indeed, Jerusalem is the throne of God, now, in the sense that "The word of the Lord went forth from Jerusalem" on the day of Pentecost. "When Christ came, the kingdom was indeed established in Zion, but not in material terms (John 18:36; Acts 1:6, etc.)."[23] "The Jerusalem which is above, which is free, is our mother" (Galatians 4:26). It appears to us that if one searches for a certainty, it would surely appear in the fact that the very city that crucified God's only begotten Son should be the very last place on earth where God would establish his throne! On the Day of Pentecost, the apostle Peter revealed that the Old Testament promise of a Messianic successor to David's throne was a promise of the Resurrection of Christ! (Acts 2:31).

"Judah... and Israel... shall come together ... to the land that I gave for an inheritance ..." (Jeremiah 3:18). Such an event as the union of the divided kingdom of Israel could never occur until there was a genuine repentance and return to the fold of God by both peoples. There having never been the slightest indication that anything like that ever happened, "The projected union must point to the Messianic age of grace, when Jew and Gentile alike will do honor before the enthroned Lord in Zion."[24] That such a remark is indeed sound exegesis is proved by the words of the author of Hebrews regarding "where" Christians worship God:

"Ye are not come unto a mount that might be touched... but ye are come unto mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable hosts of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the New Covenant" (Hebrews 12:18-24).

In passages like this, it is clear enough that words like mount Zion and Jerusalem, in the days of the New Covenant, are to be understood spiritually. "Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem, is that holy hill upon which Christ reigns."[25]

"Out of the land of the north ..." (Jeremiah 3:18). "This refers to the glorious days of Christianity and the ingathering of Jews from all the lands of their dispersion and the uniting of them with the Christian church."[26]

Robert Jamieson understood these verses to mean that, "The good land covenanted to Abraham is to be restored to his seed; but the question arises, How shall this be done?[27] Many sincere people ask this same question; but the answer is simple enough. God has already fulfilled his holy promise to deliver Palestine to the posterity of Abraham; but when they became more evil than the pagan Canaanites they had replaced, God threw them out of Palestine for just reasons; and there is no record anywhere that God ever promised to establish an apostate and rebellious nation forever in Palestine, merely upon the basis that they had indeed once inherited it.

Subsequently to their loss of Palestine through their gross sins, there are many promises like the one in this chapter, in which God speaks of the "return" of his people and of his restoring them to "their land"; but all such promises have their fulfillment, not in the old racial Israel at all, which has never repented and is still God's enemy; but in the "righteous remnant" along with the Gentiles who constitute the New Israel of God, and who are "spiritually returned" to Jerusalem, not the old one, but "the heavenly Jerusalem."