Jeremiah 31:20 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he, &c. These questions are designed to be answered in the affirmative, as appears from the inference, therefore my bowels are moved for him. It seems that, to suit the idiom of our language, and fully to express the sense of the original, the particle not ought to have been supplied, and the clause to have been read, Is not Ephraim my dear son? Is he not a pleasant child? That is, is he not one that I have set my affections on, as a parent does upon a child in whom he delights? Thus Dr. Waterland, Lowth, and many others interpret the words. Houbigant, however, defends the common reading, and thinks that God means to deny that Ephraim was his son, in order to show him that his bowels were moved toward him solely through free mercy, and not on account of any merits or deservings of his people. For since I spake against him Or, of him, as the same phrase in the original is translated Jeremiah 48:27. I do earnestly remember him still Ever since I have so severely reproved and chastised him, my thoughts toward him have been thoughts of peace. I have a fatherly kindness and affection for him. Therefore my bowels are troubled for him Or, yearn over him, as Joseph's bowels yearned toward his brethren, even when he spake roughly to them. Observe, reader, when God afflicts his people, yet he does not forget them; when he casts them out of their land, yet he does not cast them out of his sight, nor out of his mind. Even then, when God is speaking against us, yet he is acting for us, and designing our good in all; and this is our comfort in our affliction, that the Lord thinketh upon us, though we have forgotten him. When Israel's afflictions extorted a penitent confession and submission, it is said, (Judges 10:16,) his soul was grieved for the misery of Israel: for he always afflicts with the greatest tenderness. It was his compassion that mitigated Ephraim's punishment, (Hosea 11:8-9,) My heart is turned within me, &c., and now the same compassion accepted Ephraim's repentance, and induced God to say, I will surely have mercy upon him.