Yahweh's Marriage Pt. 3: Jeremiah
Is there any hope for Israel and Judah after their divorce from the Lord?
Photo by Andrej Lišakov for Unsplash
This is the third installment of a series on how the prophets used marriage laws from the Torah to convict Israel of abandoning the Lord. Part one can be found here, and part two can be found here.
The book of Jeremiah is full of Hosea’s influence. Jeremiah reworked the themes and logic of Hosea’s life and prophetic mission to address Israel’s new situation. Judah was now in exile, and Jeremiah reminded her of her marriage and honeymoon with Yahweh, and to warn her that if she did not repent, she would end up like her sister Israel, now “divorced” and under judgment.
Judah had forgotten her husband, lusting instead after other gods and nations. As a result of her unfaithfulness, Judah was under threat of divorce. If she did not change course, she would suffer the same alienation as Israel. And yet, Judah only doubled down in her worship of false gods:
She saw that for all the adulteries of that faithless one, Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce; yet her false sister Judah did not fear, but she too went and played the harlot. . . Yet for all this her false sister Judah did not return to me with her whole heart, but in pretense, says the Lord. And the Lord said to me, “Faithless Israel has shown herself less guilty than false Judah. (Jeremiah 3:6, RSV)
As bad as Israel’s sin was, it was worse that Judah had not only copied Israel’s faithlessness, but lied about it. Making a pretense of returning to her husband, Judah added the sin of false repentance and duplicity to her adultery.
Jeremiah saw the law governing divorcees in Deuteronomy 24:1-4 as a hindrance to the possible reunification of Yahweh with his people. In this case, Israel did not have a second husband, but she had many lovers in the false gods she worshiped:
If a man divorces his wife
and she goes from him
and becomes another man’s wife,
will he return to her?
Would not that land be greatly polluted?
You have played the harlot with many lovers;
and would you return to me?
says the Lord. (Jeremiah 31:1-7, RSV)
For Jeremiah, if Israel were to marry Yahweh a second time, it would pollute the land and violate his own law. And yet, Jeremiah has read of the hope that Yahweh offered his people through the prophecies of Hosea, so he set about to discover how this happen.
Jeremiah saw and teased out a solution hinted at in Hosea: the reunification of Israel and Judah as a whole new nation, which would constitute a new bride for Yahweh: “In those days the house of Judah shall join the house of Israel, and together they shall come from the land of the north to the land that I gave your fathers for a heritage.” (Jeremiah 3:18, RSV)
Israel and Judah would not be reunited with their Lord independently, but as a new, reconciled, unified nation. Jeremiah “pleads with faithless Israel to return (Jeremiah 3:12-20), and, when they respond, he shows how they can be reconciled because the future Israel is different from the faithless Israel.”1
The new covenant would be with “the virgin Israel” (Jeremiah 31:4). As in Hosea, the sons of Israel would be gathered together with Judah, and “not my people” would become “sons of the living God.” Jeremiah saw a new nation, a new bride, made up of the sons of Israel.
David Instone-Brewer explains how this circumvents the possible problem with the law governing the return of the divorcee: “In this way the law of Deuteronomy 24 is not broken because God does not remarry exactly the same former wife, and yet the prophecy of Hosea is also fulfilled because the future Israel will be reconciled when she becomes a new wife in unification with Judah.”2
When Yahweh rebuilds the virgin Israel, the result is overwhelming abundance and joy:
They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion,
and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord,
over the grain, the wine, and the oil,
and over the young of the flock and the herd;
their life shall be like a watered garden,
and they shall languish no more. (Jeremiah 31:12)
Israel will be gathered together into one nation, and establish a new covenant with this new bride:
Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. (Jeremiah 31:31-33, RSV)
The original covenant was broken when Israel forsook the Lord for the gods of the foreign nations. Yahweh was forced into a divorce with his people, but this new covenant will be with the new nation of Israel-and-Judah, a virgin bride for her husband. Where God had told Hosea to name his son, “Not my people”, which echoed the words of the divorce formula,"you are not my husband/wife”, now God says, “I will be their God, and they shall be my people”.
Instone-Brewer, 43.
Instone-Brewer, 42.