Is Ephraim my dear son? — Literally, a child of delight — i.e., fondled and caressed.
Is he a pleasant child? — We have to ask whether an affirmative or negative answer is implied to these questions. On the former view, the words express the yearning of a father’s heart towards the son whom he still loves in spite of all his faults. Jehovah wonders, as it were, at his affection for one who has been so rebellious. On the latter, they give prominence to the faults as having deprived him of all claim to love, even though the father’s heart yearned towards the prodigal in pity. The former gives, beyond all doubt, the best meaning. In every word, whether of reproof or invitation, there was implied a loving remembrance.
For since I spake against him. — Better, As often as I speak to him. The preposition can hardly have the meaning of “against,” for which Jeremiah uses different words, and implies rather (as in the “communed with” of 1 Samuel 25:39; “When she shall be spoken for,” Song Song of Solomon 8:8) — speaking with a view to win. By some commentators (Ewald) the word for “speak” is rendered “smite,” but the ordinary rendering gives an adequate meaning. The original gives both for “earnestly remember” and “surely have mercy” the Hebrew idiom of reduplication — Remembering, I remember; pitying, I pity. The thought expressed is that Jehovah could not bring himself to utter the sentence of rejection. His love turned to the penitent who turned to Him. We have something like a foreshadowing of the love of the father of the prodigal in Luke 15:20.