Jeremiah 31:3 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

The Lord hath appeared of old unto me— From afar off Jehovah appeared unto me. These words, it is certain, were not spoken in reference to the same time that those were which go before. They may well be included in a parenthesis, and seem designed to intimate, that the prophet was favoured with a visionary prospect of a remote period to come, in which God is represented as discoursing of the transactions belonging to that period, as if they were already at hand; and this accounts for the use of verbs in the past tense, both in the preceding verse, and in Jeremiah 31:6-7. It is manifest from Jeremiah 31:26 that the prophet had been in a vision or trance, out of which he awaked. And it is no less evident, that the general restoration of Israel, the subject of the discourse which he had heard during his vision, so much to his satisfaction, is not yet accomplished, nor entered upon, nor is there any certainty when it exactly will be.