Jeremiah 3:20,21 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Surely, as a wife treacherously departeth, &c. This may be rendered, As a woman is not faithful to her husband, or, her friend, as the Hebrew רעה signifies. Here God returns to the carnal Israelites; so that the Jewish doctors seem to be right in calling the spirit of prophecy an abrupt spirit. So have you dealt treacherously with me God, by thus reminding the Israelites of what they had formerly been, endeavours to bring them to repentance and new obedience for the time to come. A voice was heard, &c. Here the prophet, foreseeing that some of them would at length be brought to true repentance for all their misdoings, represents them as bewailing themselves upon the high places, the scenes of their former idolatries. Compare Jeremiah 31:9; Jeremiah 50:4; Zechariah 12:10. Or, as some think, he alludes to the usual practice of praying upon the tops of houses in great calamities, Isaiah 15:3; and Isaiah 22:1; Jeremiah 7:29. For they have perverted their way This is that which they lament: for this they bemoan themselves. They have forgotten the Lord their God Of this they were now sensible, and for this they were humbled, as being the first step toward their apostacy. Observe well, reader, 1st, Sin is the perverting of our way; it is turning aside to crooked paths, and perverting that which is right. By it we embarrass ourselves, and bring ourselves into trouble and misery. 2d, Forgetting the Lord our God is at the bottom of all sin: if men would remember God, and their obligations to him, and consider that his eye is upon them, they would not transgress as they do. 3d, Prayers and tears well become those whose consciences tell them that they have perverted their way and forgotten their God.