Withhold thy foot. — From the brute types of passion the prophet passes to the human. Here he has Hosea as giving a prototype (Hosea 2:5; Hosea 2:7), perhaps also Isaiah (Isaiah 23:15-16). The picture may probably enough have been drawn from the life, but that sketched in Proverbs 7:10-23 may well have supplied the outline. Jehovah, as her true husband, bids the apostate wife to refrain for very shame from acting as the harlot, rushing barefoot into the streets, panting, as with a thirst that craves to be quenched, for the gratification of her desires. The “unshod” may possibly refer to one feature of the worship of Baal or Ashtaroth, men and women taking off their shoes when they entered into their temples, as being holy ground (Exodus 3:5), and joining in orgiastic dances.
Thou saidst, There is no hope: no. — Here also we find a parallel to the thought and language of Hosea. There the one effectual remedy for the evil into which the apostate wife had fallen was to speak to her heart, and to open the door of hope (Hosea 2:14-15). Now the malignity of the evil is shown by the loss of all hope of recovery in returning to Jehovah: —
“Small sins the heart first desecrate,
At last despair persuades to great.”
Like Gomer, she will go after her “lovers,” though they are “strangers,” as if they were her only protectors. It would seem, from the recurrence of the phrase in Jeremiah 18:12, as if it were the formula of a despairing fatalism, like the proverb of the fathers eating sour grapes (Jeremiah 31:29-30; Ezekiel 18:2).