Jeremiah 2:2

(2) Go and cry . . .—The scene of the call, was, we may believe, in his home at Anathoth. Now the prophet is sent to begin his work in Jerusalem.

I remember thee.—Literally, I have remembered for thee.

The love of thine espousals.—The imagery was one derived, as we find so often in Jeremiah’s writings, from the older prophets. It was implied in the “jealous God” of Exodus 20:5, illustrated by an actual history, which was also a parable, in Hosea 1-3, and after its use by Jeremiah, expanded more fully by Ezekiel (Ezekiel 16:0). The “espousals” are thought of as coinciding with the great covenant of Exodus 24:8, when the people solemnly entered into the relation to which God called them. Then the bride was ready to follow her lord and husband even in an “unsown land”—the “waste howling wilderness” of Deuteronomy 32:10. The faithfulness of the past is contrasted with the unfaithfulness of the present.

When thou wentest after me.—Literally, thy going after me.