Yeremia 3:7

3:7 Yet even after she had done all that, I thought that she might come back to me. ¹  But she did not. Her sister, unfaithful Judah, saw what she did. ² 

Yeremia 3:10-11

3:10 In spite of all this, ³  Israel’s sister, unfaithful Judah, has not turned back to me with any sincerity; she has only pretended to do so,” ⁴  says the Lord. 3:11 Then the Lord said to me, “Under the circumstances, wayward Israel could even be considered less guilty than unfaithful Judah. ⁵ 

[3:7]  ¹ tn Or “I said to her, ‘Come back to me!’” The verb אָמַר (’amar) usually means “to say,” but here it means “to think,” of an assumption that turns out to be wrong (so HALOT 66.4 s.v. אמר); cf. Gen 44:28; Jer 3:19; Pss 82:6; 139:11; Job 29:18; Ruth 4:4; Lam 3:18.

[3:7]  sn Open theists suggest that passages such as this indicate God has limited foreknowledge; however, more traditional theologians view this passage as an extended metaphor in which God presents himself as a deserted husband, hoping against hope that his adulterous wife might return to him. The point of the metaphor is not to make an assertion about God’s foreknowledge, but to develop the theme of God’s heartbreak due to Israel’s unrepentance.

[3:7]  ² tn The words “what she did” are not in the text but are implicit from the context and are supplied in the translation for clarification.

[3:10]  ³ tn Heb “And even in all this.”

[3:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “ has not turned back to me with all her heart but only in falsehood.”

[3:11]  ⁵ tn Heb “Wayward Israel has proven herself to be more righteous than unfaithful Judah.”

[3:11]  sn A comparison is drawn here between the greater culpability of Judah, who has had the advantage of seeing how God disciplined her sister nation for having sinned and yet ignored the warning and committed the same sin, and the culpability of Israel who had no such advantage.