“Return, O faithless sons; I will heal your faithlessness.” “Behold, we come to you, for you are the LORD our God.
God here exhorts the Israelites to repent, that by their example he might move the Jews. The benefit of what is here taught might indeed have reached to the miserable captives and exiles; but as Jeremiah was especially the teacher of his own nation, he labored chiefly no doubt for their advantage, as we have before stated.
Here is, I. The charge God exhibits against Israel for their treacherous departures from him, Jer 3:20. As an adulterous wife elopes from her husband, so have they gone a whoring from God. They were joined to God by a marriage-covenant, but they broke that covenant, they dealt treacherously with God, who had always dealt kindly and faithfully with them.
Commenting on Jeremiah 3:20-25
Return, ye backsliding children,.... This is the call of the Jews to repentance in the latter day; See Gill on Jer 3:14. and I will heal your backslidings; that is, I will forgive your sins. Sins are the diseases of the soul, and the wounds made in it; and pardoning them is healing them.