Jeremiah 31:18 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

I have surely heard Ephraim, &c. Here, still further to diversify the subject, and give it the greater force, the other personage referred to in the preceding note is introduced. Ephraim, representing the ten tribes, is brought forward, lamenting his past undutifulness with great contrition and penitence, and professing an earnest desire of amendment. And “these symptoms of returning duty are no sooner discerned in him than God acknowledges him once more as a darling child, and resolves to receive him with mercy.” The passage is intended to show the change necessary to be wrought in the hearts of the Israelites, in order to their obtaining this restoration from captivity, according to the conditional promises made of old to this people. See Leviticus 26:40-41. Previously to his conferring this great benefit upon them, God must hear them bemoaning themselves, or bewailing their miserable state, and the sins which had brought them into it, acknowledging that the chastisements which they had suffered had not been more or greater than their sins had justly merited, and praying earnestly for mercy and deliverance. Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised Or, instructed by thy discipline, as אוסר maybe properly rendered. As a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke Whereas before I was as an untamed bullock, or heifer, that is not to be managed but by stripes and corrections. Turn thou me, and I shall be turned Do thou turn my heart by thy preventing and renewing grace, and then I shall be effectually reformed, Lamentations 5:21. “Sometimes the Scripture ascribes the whole work of man's conversion to God, because his grace is the first and principal cause of it. But yet, to make it effectual, man's concurrence is necessary, as appears particularly from Jeremiah 51:9, where God says, We would have healed Babylon, and she is not healed; that is, God did what was requisite on his part for her conversion, but she refused to comply with his call. To the same purpose he speaks to Jerusalem, (Ezekiel 24:13,) I have purged thee, and thou wast not purged.”