What a beautiful description is here given of the people's return to their beloved home! Reader! there is such a thing as tears of joy, as well as tears of sorrow. Holy mourners in Christ, come within the blessing, Matthew 5:4. And observe the beautiful order in the people's return. They are said first to seek the Lord their God; God in covenant. This is the first work of grace. And the second is like to it; they shall ask the way to God's Church, to Zion. And what is the object of both, but that the Covenant may never more be broken on their part, for the Lord hath never broken it on his. Reader! was there ever a more lovely representation than this? And how exactly it describes your heart, my heart, yea every heart, of a poor returning Prodigal, who by sin hath ran away from God, and is brought back by sovereign grace, to seek the Lord's face sorrowing. And oh! what grace in God to dispose the heart to all this, without which no heart would ever be disposed! What grace to receive the poor returning Prodigal when he hath nothing to bring, and nothing to offer; and when every enemy concluded that they sinned not in wounding them, because they had sinned against the Lord. Luke 15:17-24.
Jeremiah 50:4-8
4 In those days, and in that time, saith the LORD, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together, going and weeping: they shall go, and seek the LORD their God.
5 They shall ask the way to Zion with their faces thitherward, saying, Come, and let us join ourselves to the LORD in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten.
6 My people hath been lost sheep: their shepherds have caused them to go astray, they have turned them away on the mountains: they have gone from mountain to hill, they have forgotten their restingplace.c
7 All that found them have devoured them: and their adversaries said, We offend not, because they have sinned against the LORD, the habitation of justice, even the LORD, the hope of their fathers.
8 Remove out of the midst of Babylon, and go forth out of the land of the Chaldeans, and be as the he goats before the flocks.