Jeremiah 3:21

A voice was heard upon the high places, weeping and supplications of the children of Israel: for they have perverted their way, and they have forgotten the LORD their God.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(21) A voice was heard.—Yes, the guilty wife was there, but she was also penitent. The “high places” which had been the scene of the guilt of the sons of Israel, where the cries of their orgiastic worship had been heard, now echoed with their weeping and supplication (or, more literally, the weeping of suppliant prayers), as they called to mind the hateful sins of the past.

MacLaren's Expositions

Jeremiah

A COLLOQUY BETWEEN A PENITENT AND GOD

Jeremiah 3:21 - Jeremiah 3:22.

We have here a brief dramatic dialogue. First is heard a voice from the bare heights, the sobs and cries of penitence, produced by the prophet’s earnest remonstrance. The penitent soul is absorbed in the thought of its own evil. Its sin stands clear before it. Israel sees its sin in its two forms. ‘They have perverted their way,’ or have led a wrong outward life of action, and the reason is that ‘they have forgotten God,’ or have been guilty of inward alienation and departure from Him. Here is the consciousness of sin in its essential character, and that produces godly sorrow. The distinction between mere remorse and repentance is here already, in the ‘weeping and supplication.’

I. So we have here a consciousness of sin in its true nature, as embracing both deeds and heart, as originating in departure from God, and manifested in perverted conduct.

Further, we have here sorrow. There may be consciousness of sin in its true nature without any sorrow of heart. It is fatal when a man looks upon his evil, gets a more or less clear sight of it, and is not sorry and penitent. It is conceivable that there should be perfect knowledge of sin and perfect insensibility in regard to it.

A sinful man’s true mood should be sorrow-not flinging the blame on others, or on fate, or circumstances; not regarding his sin as misfortune or as inevitable or as disease.

Conscience is meant to produce that consciousness and that sorrow: but conscience may be dulled or silenced. It cannot be anyhow induced to call evil good, but it may be mistaken in what is evil. The gnomon is true, but a veil of cloud may be drawn over the sky.

Further, we have here supplication. These two former may both be experienced, without this third. There may be consciousness of sin and sorrow which lead to no blessing. ‘My bones waxed old through my roaring.’ Sorrow after a godly sort may be hindered by false notions of God’s great love, or by false notions of what a man ought to do when he finds he has gone wrong. It may be hindered by cleaving, subtle love of sin, or by self-trust. But where all these have been overcome there is true repentance.

II. The loving divine answer.

Another ear than the prophet’s has heard the plaint from the bare heights. Many a frenzied shriek had gone up from these shrines of idolatrous worship, and as with Baal’s prophets, it had brought no answer, nor had there been any that regarded. But this weeping reaches the ear that is never closed. Contrast with Jeremiah 3:23 : ‘Truly in vain is the help that is looked for from the hills, the shouting {of idol-worshippers} on the mountains.’

The instantaneousness of God’s answer is very beautiful. It is like the action of the father in the parable of the prodigal son, who saw his repentant boy afar off and ran and kissed him.

There seems to be, in both the invitation to return and in the promise to hear the backslidings, a quotation from Hosea 14:1 - Hosea 14:4. We see here how God meets the penitent with a love that recognises all his sin and yet is love. It is not rebuke or reproach that lies in that designation, ‘backsliding children.’ It is tenderest mercy that lets us see that He knows exactly what we are, and yet promises His love and forgiveness. He loves us sinners with a love that beckons us back to Himself, with a love that promises healing. The truth which should be taken into the mind and heart of the man conscious of sin is God’s knowledge of it all already and yet His undiminished love, God’s welcome of him back, God’s ready pardon. All this is true for the world in Christ, and is true for every individual soul.

The answer and the invitation here are immediate.

There is often a long period of painful struggle. It looks as if the answer were not immediate. But that is because we do not listen to it.

III. The happy response of the returning soul.

That too is immediate. The soul believes God’s promises. It recognises God’s claim. It returns to Him. We are attracted by His grace. The sunflower turns to the sun. The penitent is not driven only, but drawn -God’s own loving self-revelation in Christ is His true power. ‘I, if I am lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.’

The consciousness of sin remains and is even deepened {subsequent verses}, and yet is different. A light of hope is in it. The very sense of sin brings us to Him, to hide our faces on His heart like a child in its mother’s lap.

This response of the soul may be instantaneous. If it is not immediate, it too probably will never be at all.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

3:21-25 Sin is turning aside to crooked ways. And forgetting the Lord our God is at the bottom of all sin. By sin we bring ourselves into trouble. The promise to those that return is, God will heal their backslidings, by his pardoning mercy, his quieting peace, and his renewing grace. They come devoting themselves to God. They come disclaiming all expectations of relief and succour from any but the Lord. Therefore they come depending upon him only. He is the Lord, and he only can save. It points out the great salvation from sin Jesus Christ wrought out for us. They come justifying God in their troubles, and judging themselves for their sins. True penitents learn to call sin shame, even the sin they have been most pleased with. True penitents learn to call sin death and ruin, and to charge upon it all they suffer. While men harden themselves in sin, contempt and misery are their portion: for he that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but he that confesseth and forsaketh them, shall find mercy.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Upon the high places - Upon those bare table-lands, which previously had been the scene of Israel's idolatries Jeremiah 3:2. The prophet supposes the offer of mercy to Israel if repentant to have been accepted, and describes Israel's agony of grief now that she is convinced of her sins.

Weeping and supplications - literally, "the weeping of earliest prayers for mercy."

For they have ... - Rather, because "they hare perverted their way," literally, made it crooked. It gives the reason of their cry for mercy.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

21. In harmony with the preceding promises of God, the penitential confessions of Israel are heard.

high places—The scene of their idolatries is the scene of their confessions. Compare Jer 3:23, in which they cast aside their trust in these idolatrous high places. The publicity of their penitence is also implied (compare Jer 7:29; 48:38).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

A voice was heard: here the prophet seems to express Israel’s repentance and turning to God; and that which they were at present engaging themselves in; (the word being participial, and in the present tense;) delivered in a prophetical style, as that in Jeremiah 31:15; and that not only out of a sense of their judgments that they were under, but chiefly of their sins they were guilty of, and the pardon of which they were now begging. which is intimated by weeping and supplication.

Upon the high places, viz. that their cry might be the more public, both open and loud, Jeremiah 22:20 Matthew 10:27; possibly alluding to the usual practice of praying on the tops of houses in great calamities, Isaiah 15:3 22:1 Jeremiah 7:291,

Weeping and supplications; or rather, weeping supplications; showing the intenseness of it; praying in weeping, and weeping in prayer, Zechariah 12:10, like Peter’s weeping, Matthew 26:75.

Of the children of Israel; the end of which might be to provoke Judah also to repentance, or otherwise to charge upon them their stupidity, and threaten them with the like judgments, if they would not return upon Israel’s example.

They have perverted their way, and they have forgotten the Lord their God: this expresseth rather the matter of their prayer than the cause of it, Lamentations 5:16, drawn chiefly from their sins, as also from their calamities.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

A voice was heard upon the high places,.... And so might be heard afar off; it shows that the repentance and confession of the Jews, when convinced and converted, will be very public, and made upon those places where they have committed their sins; see Jeremiah 2:20, for this and the following verses declare the humiliation, repentance, and conversion of the Jews, and the manner in which they shall be brought to it, and be openly put among the children:

weeping and supplications of the children of Israel; not so much lamenting their calamities, as mourning over their sins, supplicating the pardon of them, and freely and ingenuously confessing them:

for they have perverted their way, and they have forgotten the Lord their God; or, "because they have" (k), &c. this they shall be sensible of, that they have perverted the right ways of the Lord by their traditions, and have forgotten the worship of the Lord, as the Targum paraphrases it; yea, the Lord himself, their covenant God and kind benefactor, and lightly esteemed of the true Messiah, the Rock of their salvation. The consideration of which will cause them to weep and mourn; which they will do when the Spirit of grace and supplication is poured out upon them; and they shall look upon him whom they have pierced, Zechariah 12:10. Some interpret this as the cause of their calamities, and not as the subject matter of their mourning; but the latter seems best to agree with what follows, which shows by what means they were brought to repentance, and were converted.

(k) "quia perverterunt viam suam", Munster, Montanus, Junius & Tremellius; "eo quod", Piscator; "quod pravam viam inierunt", Cocceius.

Geneva Study Bible

{u} A voice was heard upon the high places, weeping and supplications of the children of Israel: for they have perverted their way, and they have forgotten the LORD their God.

(u) Signifying, that God, whom they had forsaken, would bring their enemies to them, who would lead them captive, and make them to cry and lament.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

21. bare heights] For the choice of such places for lamentation cp. ch. Jeremiah 7:29; Isaiah 15:2; Jdg 11:37.

21–25. Vividly drawn picture of Judah’s repentance. From the high places, the very scenes of her idolatrous excess, there comes a sound, at first of inarticulate weeping. In response to Jehovah’s gracious invitation, the emotion ventures to express itself in words of deep shame and contrition.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 21. - Another of those rapid transitions so common in emotional writing like Jeremiah's. The prophet cannot bear to dwell upon the backsliding of his people. He knows the elements of good which still survive, and by faith sees them developed, through the teaching of God's good providence, into a fruitful repentance. How graphic is the description! On the very high places (or rather, bare, treeless heights or downs, as ver. 2) where a licentious idolatry used to be practiced, a sound is heard (render so, not was heard) - the sound of the loud and audible weeping of an impulsive Eastern people (comp. Jeremiah 7:29). For they have; this evidently gives the reason of the bitter lamentation; render, because they have. Jeremiah 3:21

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

But Israel did not meet the expectation. Like a faithless wife from her husband, Israel fell away from its God. The particle of comparison כּאשׁר is omitted before the verb, as in Isaiah 55:9, cf. Isaiah 55:10 and Isaiah 55:11. רע does not precisely mean husband, nor yet paramour, but friend and companion, and so here is equal to wedded husband. בּגד c. מן, withdraw faithlessly from one, faithlessly forsake - c. בּ, be faithless, deal faithlessly with one.

Yet Israel will come to a knowledge of its iniquity, and bitterly repent it, Jeremiah 3:21. From the heights where idolatry was practised, the prophet already hears in spirit the lamentations and supplications of the Israelites entreating for forgiveness. על שׁפיים points back to Jeremiah 3:2, when the naked heights were mentioned as the scenes of idolatry. From these places is heard the supplicating cry for pardon. כּי העווּ, because (for that) they had made their way crooked, i.e., had entered on a crooked path, had forgotten their God.