Jeremiah 3:6 - Meaning and Application

The date of this message matters for understanding it. It came in the days of Josiah, the king who began a blessed work of reform. He was sincere in that work, but the people were not sincere in joining him. God gave this message to the prophet to correct their hypocrisy and warn them where it would lead.

The passage compares the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Israel means the ten tribes that broke away from the throne of David and the temple in Jerusalem. Judah means the two tribes that stayed with both. Their separate histories are recorded in the books of Kings, and here we get a short summary of what matters for this lesson.

First, there is the case of Israel, the ten tribes. The prophet may have just been reading their history when God asked, “Have you seen what backsliding Israel has done?” (Jeremiah 3:6). He could not have seen it with his own eyes, because Israel had been taken into exile long before he was born. Still, what we read in Scripture should affect us as if we had seen it ourselves.

Israel is called backsliding because that kingdom began in rebellion against God’s order, both in worship and in government. They were deeply given to idolatry. They played the prostitute on every high hill and under every green tree (Jeremiah 3:6), meaning they worshiped false gods at high places and in groves. This should not surprise us, because from the beginning they had already worshiped God through the golden calf images at Dan and Bethel. Idolatry keeps moving downhill. People who want images in worship soon come to want other gods too, because if they ignore the second commandment, they will not keep the first either.

God did not leave them without warning. Through his prophets, he called them to repent and turn back. After they had done all these things and deserved to be abandoned, he still said, “Return to me, and I will receive you” (Jeremiah 3:7). Though they had turned away from both the house of David and the house of Aaron, God still sent prophets to call them back to himself. He did not press their return to David’s line as strongly as one might expect, but he did press their return to true worship. Elijah, that great reformer, is not known for demanding that they return to the house of David, but he did labor for their return to the worship of the true God. True devotion matters more to God than even his own outward institutions.

Even so, Israel would not return. God saw it and was deeply displeased (Jeremiah 3:7-8). He keeps account, whether we do or not, of how many times he calls us and we refuse. Because of their repeated adultery, as the text describes idolatry, he dismissed them. He gave them a certificate of divorce, meaning he removed them from his protection and left them open to their enemies. He scattered their synagogues and schools of the prophets and cut off their claim to the covenant made with their fathers. Those who join themselves to rivals of God will justly be cast off by him.

Now look at Judah, the kingdom of the two tribes. She is called treacherous sister Judah. She was a sister because she came from the same family line, Abraham and Jacob. But she was treacherous because, while she seemed to stay close to God when Israel rebelled, she proved false to her own promises. Judah kept the true kings and priests God had appointed, so people expected faithfulness from her. Yet she was unfaithful. The treachery of those who claim to follow God will be judged, just as much as open rebellion.

Judah saw what Israel did and what came of it, so she should have taken warning. Israel’s captivity was meant to teach Judah. But it did not. Judah did not fear. She felt safe because she still had Levites as priests and sons of David as kings. It is a sign of deep dullness when God’s judgments on others do not awaken us to holy fear.

Judah is charged with two sins. When she had a wicked king who led her into sin, she eagerly joined him. Judah was quick to play the prostitute, meaning she readily embraced idolatry whenever it was introduced. By the shame of her whoredom, or by the public fame of it, she defiled the land and made it hateful to God. She committed adultery with stones and wood, that is, with helpless idols made of stone and timber. In the reigns of Manasseh and Amon, when the kings leaned toward idolatry, the people followed too, and the whole land was corrupted. None of them seemed to fear the ruin that Israel had already brought on itself by the same sin.

When Judah had a good king who reformed her, she did not sincerely join him. That was the present case. God tested whether they would be good under a good reign, but their inward heart stayed the same: they did not return to him with their whole heart, only in pretended ways (Jeremiah 3:10). Josiah went further in destroying idolatry than any of his predecessors, and he himself turned to the Lord with all his heart and soul (2 Kings 23:25). The people were forced to follow him outwardly. They kept a solemn Passover and renewed their covenant with God (2 Chronicles 34:32, 2 Chronicles 35:17), but their hearts were not truly right with him.

Because of this, God said at that very time, “I will remove Judah from my sight, as I removed Israel” (2 Kings 23:27). Judah had not learned from Israel’s removal. False reform and weak reform both point toward trouble for a nation. We fool ourselves if we think God can be fooled by a made-up return to him. There is no true religion without sincerity.

The two sister kingdoms are compared, and a judgment is given from that comparison: Judah was worse than Israel (Jeremiah 3:11). Israel is said to have “made herself more right” than Judah, meaning she was not as bad as Judah was. But this kind of relative innocence helps Israel very little. What good is it to say, “We are not as bad as others,” if we are not truly good ourselves?

This only makes Judah’s sin heavier, because she was guilty in two ways. First, more was expected from Judah than from Israel, so Judah acted in a more treacherous way. She dishonored a holier calling and broke a more serious promise than Israel did. Second, Judah could have learned from Israel’s fall into idolatry, but she refused to do so. When God’s judgments on others do not lead us to turn back, they only add to our own ruin.

The prophet Ezekiel makes the same kind of comparison between Jerusalem and Samaria in Ezekiel 23:11. He even compares Jerusalem with Sodom in Ezekiel 16:48, and Jerusalem is shown to be the worst of the three.