The Great Divorce: Covenant, Adoption, and Adultery Text: Jeremiah 3:19-20
Introduction: The Ache in God's Heart
The book of Jeremiah is a record of a covenant lawsuit. God, through His prophet, is indicting His people for breach of contract. But we must never imagine this as a sterile, legal proceeding, like two corporations arguing over shipping manifests. The language God uses throughout this book, and particularly in our text, is the language of a broken heart. It is the language of a father who has been spurned and a husband who has been betrayed. Our modern sensibilities, soaked as they are in sentimentalism and a therapeutic view of God, have a hard time processing this. We want a God who is above it all, a celestial bureaucrat who is never wounded, never grieved, never jealous. But the God of the Bible is a person, a husband, a father. He loves His people with a fierce, covenantal, and personal love, and therefore their treachery cuts Him to the quick.
This passage is a window into the divine pathos. It reveals the original intent of God's heart for His people, a relationship of intimate, familial love. And it lays bare the shocking reality of their rebellion, comparing it to the most intimate and foul betrayal imaginable. We are eavesdropping, as it were, on a divine soliloquy. God is speaking His heart out, revealing what He wanted, what He intended, and what He got instead. He wanted sons in a beautiful inheritance; He got treacherous spiritual adulterers. He wanted the cry of "My Father!"; He got the back-stabbing of a faithless wife.
And in this, we must see not only the story of ancient Israel, but our own story. The covenant God made with them is the root from which our own new covenant grows. The temptations they faced are the same temptations we face, namely, the temptation to trade the glorious inheritance of sonship for the fleeting pleasures of friendship with the world. And the remedy for their treachery is the same remedy for ours: the grace of a God who, despite the foulness of our sin, remains a faithful husband and a loving father.
The Text
"Then I said, ‘How I would set you among My sons And give you a pleasant land, The most beautiful inheritance of the nations!’ And I said, ‘You shall call Me, “My Father," And not turn away from following Me.’ Surely, as a woman treacherously departs from her lover, So you have dealt treacherously with Me, O house of Israel,” declares Yahweh.
(Jeremiah 3:19-20 LSB)
The Father's Deepest Desire (v. 19)
We begin with God's own reflection on His original intent, His foundational desire for His people.
"Then I said, ‘How I would set you among My sons And give you a pleasant land, The most beautiful inheritance of the nations!’ And I said, ‘You shall call Me, “My Father," And not turn away from following Me.’" (Jeremiah 3:19)
Notice the structure here. God is quoting Himself. This is what He said in His heart, this was the plan. The first thing He desired was to grant them the status of sons. "How I would set you among My sons." This is the language of adoption. Israel was not naturally God's son in the same way that Jesus is the only-begotten Son. Rather, God, in a sovereign act of grace, chose to elevate them to this privileged position. He took a slave people out of Egypt and determined to make them His heirs. This is the foundation of the covenant relationship. It is not a contract between equals; it is a gracious act of a loving Father adopting a people for Himself.
And what comes with sonship? An inheritance. God intended to "give you a pleasant land, The most beautiful inheritance of the nations!" The land of Canaan was not just a geopolitical prize. It was a tangible, earthy picture of their spiritual inheritance. It was a type, a shadow, of the ultimate inheritance that all of God's people will receive, which is the renewed heavens and the renewed earth. This land was to be a foretaste of Eden restored, a place of fruitfulness and peace under God's blessing. This is what God gives to sons. He doesn't give a wage to a servant; He gives an inheritance to a son. This is all grace. They did not earn the sonship, and they did not earn the inheritance.
Following this gracious action, God states the response He expected. This is the relational heart of the matter. "And I said, ‘You shall call Me, “My Father," And not turn away from following Me.’" The entire law, all the sacrifices, all the rituals, were meant to be the expression of this simple, filial cry: "My Father." This is not the cowering address of a slave to a master, but the affectionate, trusting cry of a child to his dad. It implies dependence, love, honor, and obedience that flows from relationship, not from a desire to punch a timecard to get a paycheck. God wanted a family, not a workforce.
And the natural result of this relationship would be steadfast loyalty. "And not turn away from following Me." Loyalty is the logic of love. If you truly see God as your Father, the one who adopted you out of slavery and gave you a glorious inheritance, why would you ever turn away? To turn away is not just to break a rule; it is to spit in the face of love. It is an act of profound relational treason. This was God's plan. It was a plan rooted in His grace, centered on a family relationship, and designed to produce lasting, joyful obedience.
The Treacherous Betrayal (v. 20)
Verse 20 presents the shocking, brutal contrast between God's loving intent and Israel's actual response. The metaphor shifts from a father and son to a husband and wife, but the central theme of covenantal betrayal remains.
"Surely, as a woman treacherously departs from her lover, So you have dealt treacherously with Me, O house of Israel,” declares Yahweh." (Jeremiah 3:20)
The word "surely" sets up the certainty of this indictment. This is not a possibility; this is the grim reality. God shifts the metaphor to that of a marriage because it is the most intense, exclusive, and intimate of all human covenants. When God brought Israel out of Egypt and made a covenant with them at Sinai, He was, in effect, marrying them. He was the faithful husband, and they were to be His faithful bride. But they were not.
The text says they acted "as a woman treacherously departs from her lover." The Hebrew word for "treacherously" is bagad. It means to deal deceitfully, to be unfaithful, to betray a trust. This is not a simple mistake. It's not an accidental wandering off. This is a calculated, high-handed act of covenant-breaking. It is spiritual adultery. Throughout the Old Testament, idolatry is condemned not simply as a theological error but as harlotry. When Israel went after the Baals and the Asherahs, they were cheating on their divine Husband. They were taking the blessings, the security, and the identity that He gave them, and they were spending it on cheap lovers who could give them nothing in return.
This imagery is designed to shock us. We have domesticated sin. We think of it in terms of misdemeanors, slip-ups, or poor choices. God thinks of it in terms of adultery and treason. When we seek our ultimate security, meaning, or pleasure in anything other than God, whether it is money, power, sex, or even our own righteousness, we are committing spiritual adultery. We are dealing treacherously with the one who pledged Himself to us. The sin of Israel was not that they failed to be perfect. Their sin was that they turned away from their Father and treacherously departed from their Husband. They abandoned the relationship that was the very basis of their existence.
And God calls them out directly: "So you have dealt treacherously with Me, O house of Israel." This is a corporate indictment. The entire nation was complicit. This was not the failure of a few bad apples; the whole barrel was rotten. And it was a betrayal of Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God, the great I AM. This makes the treachery all the more heinous. They did not betray a distant, impersonal deity. They betrayed the God who had revealed His personal name to them, the God who had bound Himself to them with oaths and promises.
The Gospel in the Rubble
So what are we to do with such a passage? It is a raw and painful exposure of human sinfulness. But even in the rubble of this broken covenant, we see the foundation being laid for a better one.
First, we must see that God's desire to have a people who cry "My Father" was not thwarted. It was ultimately and perfectly fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the true Son who never turned away, who was perfectly faithful to the Father. And through faith in Him, we are adopted into God's family and receive the Spirit of sonship, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!" (Romans 8:15). What Israel failed to do, Christ did. What they threw away, He secured for us. We are made sons and given an inheritance not because of our faithfulness, but because of His.
Second, we must see that the problem of the treacherous, adulterous heart is solved only by the New Covenant. God, speaking again through Jeremiah just a few chapters later, promises a solution: "I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people" (Jeremiah 31:33). The problem was not with God's desire or His plan; the problem was with the stony, unfaithful heart of man. The gospel solution is a spiritual heart transplant. God gives us a new heart, a heart of flesh, that desires to be faithful to Him.
Finally, this passage calls us to examine our own loyalties. The church is the bride of Christ. He is our true husband. And we are constantly tempted to deal treacherously with Him. We are tempted to flirt with the world, to find our security in our political tribe, to seek our comfort in our possessions, to build our identity on our accomplishments. Every time we do this, we are playing the harlot. We are the unfaithful wife in this story. The call of this text is a call to repentance. It is a call to turn away from our worthless lovers and return to our true Husband, to cease our rebellion and cry out once more, "My Father."
The good news is that our Husband is not like a mortal man. Under the old law, a man could not take back a wife who had been with another. But our God makes this astonishing offer: "Return, O backsliding children," says the Lord; "for I am married to you" (Jeremiah 3:14). His grace is greater than our treachery. His faithfulness covers our unfaithfulness. He is the husband who, at infinite cost to Himself, redeems His treacherous bride, cleanses her, and will one day present her to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle. That is the gospel, and it is our only hope.