God opens the case against His people by remembering when they loved Him. Then He asks them to name what He did wrong, points out that pagan nations are more loyal to gods that do not exist, and reduces the whole indictment to two evils in a single verse.
A study in Jeremiah 2-3 · Arthur Baldwin · StandUp4Jesus.Org · 14 min read
The Kindness Of Thy Youth
“Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, Thus saith the LORD; I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.”
Jeremiah 2:2
This is the first thing God tells Jeremiah to say in public, and it is not what a prosecutor opens with.
I remember thee. Before a single charge is laid, God says He has kept the memory of when they loved Him — and He describes it as a courtship. The love of thine espousals. The whole of the next two chapters runs on that image, and it decides how everything else in them should be read. This is not a landlord evicting a tenant. It is a husband.
And notice what He remembers about it: “when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown.” He remembers the period when they had nothing. No crops, no cities, no security — a land nobody had planted. That is the season He looks back on with affection.
Which is worth sitting with, because we tend to assume our best days with God were the comfortable ones. He names the hungry years.
What Iniquity Have Your Fathers Found In Me?
“Thus saith the LORD, What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone far from me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain?”
Jeremiah 2:5
God invites them to state the case against Him. What did I do? It is an extraordinary question for the Almighty to ask, and it is asked seriously — the rest of the chapter behaves as though an answer were genuinely welcome, and none is ever produced.
Then the sentence turns, and there is a warning inside it that is easy to read past: they have walked after vanity, and are become vain. You become what you pursue. They did not merely chase emptiness; the chasing emptied them. That is stated as a mechanism, not a punishment.
Verse 6 adds the detail that makes the drift explicable:
“Neither said they, Where is the LORD that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, that led us through the wilderness… through a land that no man passed through, and where no man dwelt?”
Jeremiah 2:6
Nobody asked. That is the charge. Not that they searched and failed to find Him, but that the question stopped being raised. A nation does not usually abandon God in a single decision; it stops asking where He is, and the rest follows quietly.
And when the failure is itemized in verse 8, look at who is on the list:
“The priests said not, Where is the LORD? and they that handle the law knew me not: the pastors also transgressed against me, and the prophets prophesied by Baal, and walked after things that do not profit.”
Jeremiah 2:8
Priests. Lawyers. Pastors. Prophets. Four categories, and every one of them is professional religious leadership. The people are not mentioned here at all. God begins the accounting at the top, with the men whose entire occupation was knowing Him — and the phrase used of the ones who handled the law is the sharpest in the verse: they knew me not. It is possible to handle the law for a living and not know its Author.
Hath A Nation Changed Their Gods?
“Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit. Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this, and be horribly afraid, be ye very desolate, saith the LORD.”
Jeremiah 2:11, 12
God sends them to check the neighbors — go to Cyprus, send to Kedar, look into it properly — and the finding is embarrassing. The pagan nations do not swap gods. They stay loyal to deities that God says flatly are no gods at all.
So the comparison is not between two religions. It is between constancy to nothing and inconstancy to Someone. The nations kept faith with idols; Judah did not keep faith with the living God. Judged simply on loyalty, the idolaters win.
And the reaction God calls for is not anger. It is astonishment. The heavens are summoned to be shocked. This is being presented as something that should not be possible — a trade so bad that creation itself is asked to stare.
Two Evils, Not One
“For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.”
Jeremiah 2:13
Here is the verse the whole book is built on, and the counting matters. God says two.
The first evil is leaving. The second is what they did next — and it is charged separately, as its own offense. That is not how we usually reckon it. We would call the second thing a consequence of the first, an understandable result, hardly a fresh sin. God counts it twice because the substitute took work.
Hewed is the operative word. Nobody hews a cistern by accident. It means quarrying into rock, hauling out the spoil, plastering the walls to seal them, and doing it in the heat with a chisel. The second evil is not drift. It is a construction project.
Which tells you something uncomfortable about how people leave God. It is rarely the lazy option. It is usually more effort than staying would have been.
A Fountain And A Cistern
The two images are chosen with care, and the contrast is complete at every point.
- A fountain moves; a cistern holds still. One is living water, the other is water that has been standing since the last rain.
- A fountain replenishes itself; a cistern only ever contains what was put in it. Draw from a spring and it refills. Draw from a tank and it empties.
- A fountain is found; a cistern is made. You cannot manufacture a spring. You can build a tank, and then it is yours.
- A fountain is where it is; a cistern can be dug wherever you want it. The fountain requires you to go to it. That, one suspects, is much of the appeal of the cistern.
And then the detail that turns the whole picture: broken cisterns, that can hold no water.
The trade was already bad when the tank worked. Stored water for living water is a poor exchange on the best day. But these leak. So the labor bought nothing at all — not less than the fountain, not a smaller supply, but an empty hole in the rock and a summer with no water in it.
That is the anatomy of every substitute for God, and it is why the verse has outlived its century. The thing that replaces Him always requires more work than He did, delivers less, and then fails at exactly the moment it is needed.
Can A Maid Forget Her Ornaments?
“Have I been a wilderness unto Israel? a land of darkness? wherefore say my people, We are lords; we will come no more unto thee? Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet my people have forgotten me days without number.”
Jeremiah 2:31, 32
God asks whether He has been a desert to them — whether the complaint is that He failed to provide. The question answers itself, and the reply He quotes back at them is not a complaint at all: “We are lords; we will come no more unto thee.” It is independence, not grievance. Nothing went wrong. They simply decided they no longer needed to come.
Then the image changes back to the wedding, and it lands as an argument from ordinary human behavior. A young woman does not misplace her jewelry. A bride does not forget where she put her dress. Some things are not forgettable, because of what they mean.
“Yet my people have forgotten me days without number.” Not once, in a crisis. Continuously, and for so long that the days cannot be counted — which means the forgetting had itself become normal, and nobody noticed it was happening.
Yet Return Again Unto Me
“They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man’s, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the LORD.”
Jeremiah 3:1
To feel the weight of this verse you have to know the law it is quoting. Deuteronomy 24 rules that a woman divorced, remarried and divorced again “may not” be taken back by her first husband — “that is abomination before the LORD.” The door does not merely close. It is nailed shut, by statute.
God cites that law here. He raises it Himself. He states His own legal position accurately, including the part that rules Him out — and He does not soften it: thou hast played the harlot with many lovers. Not a technical breach. Many lovers.
And then, against every word He has just quoted: yet return again to me.
This is one of the great verses of the Old Testament and it is easy to miss because it arrives mid-sentence. The Lawgiver reads out the law that shuts the door, agrees that the facts are worse than the law contemplates, and holds the door open anyway. He does not pretend the marriage was fine. He does not amend the statute. He invites her back over it.
Nothing in Jeremiah 3 explains how that can be just. The explanation is not given here — it is given at a cross, centuries later, and this verse is God committing Himself to it long before the means were revealed.
Backsliding Israel And Treacherous Judah
“And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also.”
Jeremiah 3:8
Two sisters, two kingdoms. The northern kingdom, Israel, had already gone — carried off by Assyria a hundred years before Jeremiah was born. God describes that as a divorce, formally documented.
Judah is the sister who watched it happen. Verse 7 puts it exactly: “And her treacherous sister Judah saw it.” She had the whole case study in front of her — the sin, the warnings, the sentence carried out on a nation of her own blood — and did the same thing anyway.
Which produces the verdict in verse 11, and it should stop anyone who assumes that having more light is the same as being safer:
“The backsliding Israel hath justified herself more than treacherous Judah.”
Jeremiah 3:11
The one with less looks better than the one with more. Israel sinned in ignorance of an example; Judah sinned in full view of one.
And the specific charge against Judah is not idolatry alone. It is verse 10, and it is the most searching line in the chapter:
“And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah hath not turned unto me with her whole heart, but feignedly, saith the LORD.”
Jeremiah 3:10
Note when this was said: “in the days of Josiah the king” (verse 6). Josiah was the great reformer — the altars torn down, the book of the law found and read aloud, the Passover kept as it had not been kept in generations. On paper it was a revival.
And God, in the middle of it, says the turning was feigned. The reformation was real at the top and pretended underneath. That is not a comfortable thing for any church to read, and it is not said about pagans. It is said about the people who were, at that very moment, doing everything right in public.
One Of A City, And Two Of A Family
“Go and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the LORD; and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful, saith the LORD, and I will not keep anger for ever.”
Jeremiah 3:12
Now look at the direction Jeremiah is told to preach. Toward the north — toward the kingdom that no longer existed, whose people had been scattered through the Assyrian empire and who were, as a nation, finished. He is sent to call back the sister who was already divorced and gone.
The terms are almost nothing: “Only acknowledge thine iniquity.” That is the whole requirement in verse 13. Not restitution, not a probationary period. Say what is true about what you did.
And the ground given is not their improvement but His character — for I am merciful — followed by the sentence that should not survive two chapters of adultery imagery:
“Turn, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion.”
Jeremiah 3:14
I am married unto you. Present tense, after the bill of divorce has been described. The legal language and the covenant language are both true at once, and God holds to the second.
Then one of a city, and two of a family. The numbers are small on purpose. He is not promising a national movement; He is describing individuals gathered one and two at a time out of places that are not coming back. Nobody is saved here as part of a crowd.
The chapter ends where it has been going the whole time:
“Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backslidings.”
Jeremiah 3:22
Not and I will overlook them. Not and I will hold them against you quietly. Heal — the word used of a wound closing, of something actually repaired rather than pardoned and left damaged.
Two chapters that began by counting two evils end with God offering to fix the thing that caused them. He is the fountain in verse 13 and the physician in verse 22, and in both He is the one doing the work. The people supply only the returning, and even that He has to ask for four separate times.
Next in this study: Ask For The Old Paths — Jeremiah 4 to 6, where the lion comes up out of his thicket and the land goes back to being without form, and void.
