Jeremiah 23:6

6. Judah… Israel The prophet writes as though Israel had not been destroyed; and this was true in a sense deeper and more spiritual than that in which she had been destroyed. The passing away of her political power was a mere incident. The spiritual results of the long centuries of divine tuition and discipline were still conserved. There had been reared a temple of spiritual truth which even the shock of war could not cast down. Israel and Judah are still complementary parts of God’s indestructible Church.

Whereby he shall be called Literally, he shall call him, or one shall call him. The subject is either Jehovah understood, or the verb is impersonal, which is the preferable view. The object “he” is clearly the Personage of the preceding verse. A few commentators, mainly because of Jeremiah 33:16, refer it to the Jewish people, but most unwarrantably.

The Lord our Righteousness “Though the Hebrew language admitted into ordinary appellations the name of the Deity, yet this is the case solely in compound, and never in uncompounded, names. Such are either memorials of some great event, (for instance, Genesis 6:14; Genesis 22:14; Exodus 17:15; Judges 6:24, etc.,) or virtual promises of some future deliverance, as Jeremiah 33:16; Ezekiel 48:35; or names of the Deity, as in Isaiah 7:16; Isaiah 9:6.” (Dean Smith, in loc.) The import of the name is, that Jehovah will, by the Messiah, establish among his people a reign of righteousness. The phrase does not look directly to outward and technical justification, but to holiness of heart and life.