Jeremiah 3:20 - Meaning and Application

Here, first, is God’s charge against Israel for their false turns away from him, Jeremiah 3:20. Like an unfaithful wife who leaves her husband, they have gone after other gods and broken faith with God. They were bound to him by a covenant, a solemn agreement, but they broke it and dealt treacherously with the One who had always dealt kindly and faithfully with them. Treachery against ordinary people is bad enough, but treachery against God is a far greater wrong, almost like rebellion.

Second, there is their conviction and confession of this charge, Jeremiah 3:21. When God rebuked them for turning away, some among them, those he would bring to Zion, were heard weeping and praying on the high places. They humbled themselves before the God of their fathers and grieved over their troubles and over the sins that had caused them. They confessed, “We have twisted our way and forgotten the Lord our God.” Sin is a turning aside from the right path. At the root of all sin is forgetting the Lord, because if people kept in mind God’s eye on them and their duty to him, they would not rebel so easily. Sin also brings trouble on ourselves, as Lamentations 3:9 says, and those who see this rightly should pray and weep over it. When foolishness ruins a person’s way, the heart should be softened before the Lord, not angry with him (Proverbs 19:3).

Third, God invites them to return to him, Jeremiah 3:22. “Return, you backsliding children,” he says. He calls them children in tenderness and pity. Though they are stubborn and rebellious children, they are still his children, and while he corrects them he will not cast them off. Once they are convicted of sin and humbled by it, they are ready to hear this invitation, just as Christ calls the weary and burdened to come to him. God promises, “I will heal your backslidings.” He will comfort them in the sorrow their sin has brought, deliver them from the troubles they have caused for themselves, and cure their stubborn habit of turning away. He heals backsliding by forgiving mercy, quieting peace, and renewing grace.

Fourth, they give a ready and cheerful answer to God’s call: “Behold, we come to you.” Their reply echoes his voice, like a cry coming back from broken walls to a broken heart. God says, “Return,” and they answer, “We come.” They do not delay or promise to come later. They mean a full return, not a half-hearted one. They also speak as one people, “We come,” all together.

They come giving themselves to God as their own Lord and God. “You are the Lord our God,” they say, meaning, “We take you as ours, and we give ourselves to you.” They admit that it was their sin and folly to leave him. When we turn back to God after drifting away, it is a great comfort to look to him as ours in covenant.

They also give up every other source of help. “Salvation is in vain to hope for from the hills and from the multitude of mountains,” they say. They had worshiped idols on hills and mountains (Jeremiah 3:6), and they had trusted in many false gods there. Now they see the emptiness of creature-trust and want nothing more to do with it. Nothing good can come from idols, but from God comes every good thing, even salvation itself.

They come depending on God alone as their God. “In the Lord our God is the salvation of Israel,” they confess. He is the Lord, and he alone can save when every other helper fails. He is their God, and in his own way and time he will bring salvation. This points forward to the great salvation from sin that Jesus Christ accomplished, the Lord’s own great salvation.

They also justify God in their troubles and judge themselves for their sins, Jeremiah 3:24-25. They blame their idols for the ruin they suffered, because their idols gave them no good and brought them great harm. “Shame has devoured the labor of our fathers,” they say. True repentance learns to call sin shame, even the sin a person once loved and honored like an idol. It also learns to call sin ruin and death, and to lay the blame for wasted blessings on that sin. Their idols had devoured the work of their fathers, including their flocks, herds, sons, and daughters. Either these losses came because idolatry brought God’s judgments on their land and families, or these very gifts had been offered up to their idols and consumed by them without mercy.

Finally, they take shame to themselves for their sin and folly. “We lie down in our shame,” they say, unable to bear it. “Our confusion covers us.” Their shame is both the shame God’s judgment has brought and the shame their own consciences now feel. Sin carries shame with it, and it has done so from the beginning. They admit they are sinners by inheritance too, saying, “We and our fathers have sinned.”

We were sinners from an early time. We began our course of sin in youth, and we have kept on sinning even to this day, although God often called us to repent and turn away from our sins. What is worst about sin is the insult it gives to God. By it, we have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God, who forbids sin and commands us, when we have sinned, to repent.

This seems to be the language of the repentant people of Israel, the ten tribes, either those in captivity or those who remained in their land (Jeremiah 3:20). The prophet notices their repentance to stir Judah to holy zeal. David used a similar argument with the elders of Judah. He told them it would be a shame for those who were his own flesh and blood to be the last to bring the king back when the men of Israel were so eager to do it (2 Samuel 19:11-12). In the same way, the prophet urges Judah to repent because Israel did. It would be good if the zeal of others, even those less likely to do right, moved us to go before them and outdo them in what is good.