Two Sisters and a Lie: The Anatomy of False Repentance Text: Jeremiah 3:6-10
Introduction: The Covenantal Lawsuit
We come now to a passage that is a divine courtroom drama. God, through his prophet Jeremiah, is leveling a formal, covenantal lawsuit against His people. We must understand that God’s relationship with Israel was not one of vague sentimentality or casual affection. It was a marriage covenant, solemnly sworn, with blessings for fidelity and curses for infidelity. And what we find here is a charge of rampant, shameless, spiritual adultery. The modern church is allergic to this kind of language. We prefer our God to be a celestial therapist, endlessly affirming, never judging. But the God of the Bible is a husband, and He is a jealous husband. He will not tolerate rivals.
This prophecy is given in the days of Josiah, a good king, a reformer. A great revival was supposedly sweeping the land. The book of the Law had been found, the temple was being cleansed, and the people were renewing the covenant. On the surface, things looked good. But God is not interested in surfaces. He is a searcher of hearts. And what He saw underneath the veneer of Josiah’s reformation was a deep-seated treachery, a repentance that was all show and no substance. This is a terrifying thought. It is possible to be externally reformed, to be going through all the right religious motions, and to have a heart that is still playing the harlot with idols.
God here compares the apostasy of the northern kingdom, Israel, with the current state of the southern kingdom, Judah. He draws a contrast between two sisters, faithless Israel and treacherous Judah. And the verdict He renders is startling. He says that the brazen harlot, Israel, was more righteous than her sister Judah, who saw the consequences of apostasy and then pretended to repent while her heart was far from God. This passage is therefore a scalpel, intended to cut through the scar tissue of feigned religion and expose the cancer of a lying heart. It is a warning to every generation, and especially to ours, that God detests religious hypocrisy more than He detests open rebellion. He would rather deal with an honest whore than a lying bride.
The Text
Then Yahweh said to me in the days of Josiah the king, “Have you seen what faithless Israel did? She went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and she was a harlot there. I said, ‘After she has done all these things, she will return to Me’; but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it. And I saw that for all the adulteries of faithless Israel, I had sent her away and given her a certificate of divorce, yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear; but she went and was a harlot also. So it was, because of the lightness of her harlotry, that she polluted the land and committed adultery with stones and trees. Yet in spite of all this, her treacherous sister Judah did not return to Me with all her heart, but rather in lying,” declares Yahweh.
(Jeremiah 3:6-10 LSB)
The Brazen Adultery of Israel (v. 6-7)
God begins the indictment by pointing Jeremiah to the sordid history of the northern kingdom, Israel.
"Have you seen what faithless Israel did? She went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and she was a harlot there. I said, ‘After she has done all these things, she will return to Me’; but she did not return, and her treacherous sister Judah saw it." (Jeremiah 3:6-7 LSB)
The charge is one of flagrant spiritual harlotry. The language is graphic and intentional. God’s people had a marriage bond with Him, and they broke it. "Faithless Israel" is literally "apostasy Israel." Her very nature was defined by her turning away. Where did this happen? "On every high hill and under every green tree." This was the location of the Canaanite fertility cults. The Israelites were not just dabbling in idolatry; they were enthusiastically prostituting themselves to the false gods of the land, engaging in the grotesque rituals of Baal and Asherah worship. This was a public, shameless, and pervasive sin.
God’s posture toward her was one of longsuffering patience. "I said, ‘After she has done all these things, she will return to Me’." This reveals the tender heart of the spurned husband. Despite her repeated provocations, He held out hope for her repentance. He sent prophet after prophet, warning after warning. He expected that the sheer emptiness and degradation of her sin would eventually drive her back to Him. But she did not return. Her heart was hard. She was addicted to her sin.
And notice the last clause: "her treacherous sister Judah saw it." This is crucial. Judah was not an ignorant bystander. She had a front-row seat to the entire sordid affair. She watched Israel’s idolatry, she heard the prophetic warnings, and, as we will see, she witnessed the devastating consequences. The sin of Israel was not done in a corner; it was a public spectacle, a cautionary tale for her sister to see and learn from.
Divorce and a Failure to Fear (v. 8)
Because of Israel’s unrepentant adultery, God took drastic, covenantal action.
"And I saw that for all the adulteries of faithless Israel, I had sent her away and given her a certificate of divorce, yet her treacherous sister Judah did not fear; but she went and was a harlot also." (Jeremiah 3:8 LSB)
This is one of the most sobering verses in all of Scripture. God, who hates divorce, issued a "certificate of divorce" to the northern kingdom. This refers to the Assyrian captivity in 722 B.C. God judicially cut off the ten northern tribes from the land and sent them into exile. This was not a fit of pique. It was a formal, legal, covenantal judgment, executed according to the terms of the Mosaic law (Deuteronomy 24:1). Adultery has consequences. Covenant breaking has consequences. God is not to be trifled with.
This act should have sent a shockwave of terror through Judah. They saw their sister kingdom, their own flesh and blood, dispossessed and exiled for the very sins they were now committing. The lesson could not have been clearer: if you play the harlot like Israel, you will be judged like Israel. But what was Judah’s reaction? "Her treacherous sister Judah did not fear."
This is the heart of Judah's unique wickedness. She saw the fire consume her neighbor's house, and then went inside her own house and began playing with matches. This is not mere faithlessness; this is treachery. It is a calculated, high-handed rebellion in the face of manifest judgment. She despised the goodness and the severity of God. She presumed upon His grace, thinking that her possession of Jerusalem and the Temple made her immune. She believed she could manage her sin better than her sister did. This is the height of pride and folly.
Polluting the Land with Trivial Idolatry (v. 9)
Judah’s sin is then described in terms of its casual, polluting nature.
"So it was, because of the lightness of her harlotry, that she polluted the land and committed adultery with stones and trees." (Jeremiah 3:9 LSB)
The phrase "the lightness of her harlotry" is striking. It can mean the infamy or the noise of her sin, but it also carries the sense that she treated it lightly. For Judah, idolatry had become casual, a trivial matter. It was no big deal. This is how sin progresses. First it is shocking, then it is tolerated, then it is embraced, and finally it is treated as a trifle. She had lost all sense of the holiness of God and the sanctity of the covenant. Her conscience was seared.
And the result was that "she polluted the land." The land itself was consecrated to Yahweh, and her sin defiled it. This is a foundational biblical principle. Sin is not a private affair; it has public, environmental, and cosmic consequences. When a people rebels against God, the very ground beneath their feet is corrupted.
Her adultery was "with stones and trees." This is a contemptuous description of idols. She left the living God, the Creator of heaven and earth, to fornicate with inert blocks of wood and lifeless pieces of rock. This is the ultimate downgrade. All idolatry is fundamentally irrational. It is exchanging the glory of the immortal God for a cheap substitute. And Judah did it with a shrug.
A Lying Repentance (v. 10)
This brings us to the climax of the indictment, the very heart of Judah’s treachery.
"Yet in spite of all this, her treacherous sister Judah did not return to Me with all her heart, but rather in lying,” declares Yahweh." (Jeremiah 3:10 LSB)
Here is the damning verdict. Judah did "return," but not really. This is a direct reference to the reforms under King Josiah. They went through the motions. They tore down the high places, they reinstituted the Passover, they read from the book of the Law. There was an external, national "turning." But God, who sees the heart, delivers His evaluation: it was a sham. It was not "with all her heart." It was a political maneuver, a superficial cleansing, a desperate attempt to appease an angry God without actually giving Him their affections.
He says they returned "in lying." The Hebrew word is sheqer, which means falsehood, deception, a lie. Their repentance was a lie. Their covenant renewal ceremony was a lie. Their worship was a lie. They were saying all the right words, but their hearts were still chasing after their idols. They wanted God’s blessings without God. They wanted fire insurance, not a relationship with the fireman.
This is the sin that is more offensive to God than the open harlotry of Israel. Israel was a faithless wife, but Judah was a treacherous one. Judah smiled to God’s face while hiding lovers in the closet. She pretended to love what she hated and hate what she loved. This is the essence of hypocrisy, and it is a stench in God's nostrils. God can deal with sinners. The whole point of the gospel is that He receives and cleanses sinners. But He cannot deal with a sinner who pretends he is not one. A lying repentance is no repentance at all; it is simply a more sophisticated form of rebellion.
The Gospel for Hypocrites
This is a hard word. It forces us to look past the veneer of our own religious activities. It is easy for us, particularly in the Reformed world, to have all our doctrines in a row, to have our worship correct, to have our families in order, and still have hearts that are full of idols, the idols of pride, self-righteousness, comfort, approval, and control.
We can look at the pagan world, like Judah looked at Israel, and cluck our tongues at their brazen sin, all the while committing adultery with stones and trees in the secret chambers of our hearts. We can undergo our own "Josiah-like" reformations, cleaning up our external behavior, without ever dealing with the root of unbelief and rebellion within.
What is the solution? It is not to try harder to be sincere. You cannot manufacture sincerity. The solution is to be undone by this passage. It is to agree with God’s verdict. It is to confess that even our repentance needs to be repented of. It is to admit that, left to ourselves, our hearts are nothing but factories of idols and our best attempts at reformation are shot through with sheqer, with lies.
And at that point of utter bankruptcy, we are finally ready to hear the gospel. The good news is that God has provided a true and perfect repentance on our behalf, in the person of His Son. Jesus Christ lived a life of perfect, wholehearted fidelity to the Father. He never once played the hypocrite. He never had a divided heart. And on the cross, He took upon Himself the judgment for both faithless Israel and treacherous Judah. He absorbed the curse of the covenant that we deserved.
Therefore, our only hope is to stop trusting in our own repentance and to trust entirely in His. We come to God with our lying hearts and we ask Him to give us a new one. This is the promise of the New Covenant, which Jeremiah himself will later announce: "I will give them a heart to know that I am the LORD, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart" (Jer. 24:7). That whole heart is a gift of grace, purchased by Christ. Our part is to despair of our own efforts and to receive it from Him by faith alone.