Spiritual Adulteress

[Jer. 3:1] They say, If a man put away his wife, and she go from him, and become another man's, shall he return unto her again? shall not that land be greatly polluted? but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers; yet return again to me, saith the LORD.
[7] And I said after she had done all these things, Turn thou unto me. But she returned not. And her treacherous sister Judah saw it.
[8] And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery
I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also.
Contrary to all precedent in the case of adultery, Jehovah offers a return to Judah, the spiritual adulteress (1-5), allude to the subject of the last; and contain earnest exhortations to repentance, with gracious promises of pardon, notwithstanding every aggravation of guilt.
At the sixth verse a new section of prophecy commences, opening with a complaint against Judah for having exceeded in guilt her sister Israel, already cast off for her idolatry, 6-11. G-d keeps account, whether we do or no, how often He has called to us to turn to Him and we have refused. Those will justly be divorced from G-d that joins themselves to such as are rivals with Him. She is cast off, but not forever; for to this same Israel, whose place of captivity (Assyria) lay to the north of Judea, pardon is promised on her repentance, together with a restoration to the Messianic Church, along with her sister Judah, in the latter days, 12-20. The prophet foretells the sorrow and repentance of the children of Israel under the Gospel dispensation, 21. Judah worse than Israel; yet both shall be restored for G-d renews His gracious promises, 22; and they again confess their sins. In this confession their not deigning to name the idol Baal, the source of their calamities, but calling him in the abstract shame, or a thing of shame, is a nice touch of the perusal extremely beautiful and natural, 22-25.
Now Israel had been married unto G-d; joined in solemn covenant to Him to worship and serve Him only. Israel turned from following Him, and became idolatrous. On this ground, considering idolatry as a spiritual whoredom, and the precept and practice of the Law to illustrate this case, Israel could never more be restored to the Divine favor for such playing fast and loose with the marriage-bond would be a horrid profanation of that ordinance and would greatly pollute that land. They had reason to expect that G-d would refuse ever to take them to be His people again, who had not only been joined to one strange god, but had played the harlot with many lovers: but G-d, her ex-husband, in the plenitude of His mercy, is willing to receive this adulterous spouse, if she will abandon her idolatries and return unto Him.
In repentance it is good to make sorrowful reflections upon the particular acts of sin we have been guilty of, and the several places and companies where it has been committed, that we may give glory to G-d and take shame to ourselves by a particular confession of it.
Blushing is the color of virtue, or at least a relic of it; but those that are past shame (we say) are past hope. Those that have an adulterer's heart, if they indulge that, will come at length to have a whore's forehead, void of all shame and modesty. We have not obeyed the voice of the L-rd our G-d, forbidding us to sin and commanding us, when we have sinned, to repent.
The date of this sermon must be observed, in order to the right understanding of it; it was in the days of Josiah, who set on foot a blessed work of reformation, in which he was hearty, but the people were not sincere in their compliance with it; to reprove them for that, and warn them of the consequences of their hypocrisy, is the scope of that which G-d here said to the prophet, and which he delivered to them. The case of the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah is here compared, the ten tribes that revolted from the throne of David and the Temple of Jerusalem and the two tribes that adhered to both. The distinct history of those two kingdoms we have in the two books of the Kings, and here we have an abstract of both, as far as relates to this matter. It is an evidence of great stupidity and security when we are not awakened to a holy fear by the judgments of G-d upon others.
Here is a great deal of gospel in these verses, both that which was always gospel,
G-d's readiness to pardon sin and to receive and entertain returning repenting sinners, and those blessings which were in a special manner reserved for gospel times, and the uniting of Jews and Gentiles making the one new man. Thus G-d remembers His covenant with their fathers, that marriage covenant, and in consideration of that He remembers their land, Leviticus 26:42.