Studying Jeremiah (Chapter 3)

I know this may sound odd, but the end of Chapter 3 of Jeremiah, seems to me to be a fantasy The Great I Am is playing out with Israel, in His own mind!

You see, I Am is the husband.  He married Himself to Israel sometime ago.  He reminds Israel, frequently of that.  Yet despite this Israel continues to play the harlot (See Jeremiah 2:20; 3:6, 13).  It's odd to me in my cultural upbringing, to think of God referring to His people as a whore...and He married to her.  Yet Jeremiah in the boldest of language shows that the God that he is conversing with, sees things just that way.

When you read it in its actuality the graphic use of language is quite disturbing.  His insistence of using the allegory of infidelity in marriage throughout the messages that He continues to deliver to His servants is, to me, hard to listen to.  Yet despite my delicate feelings being pricked regarding this vulgarity, I Am seems to see the situation in those precise terms.

 What's even more strange is that in the opening of Chapter 3, He opens up by explaining to Jeremiah the course of action that any other red blooded man would choose whose wife proved unfaithful.  He acknowledges that any other man, would never go back after a wife who had left him for another man.  Yet this is exactly what I Am, is want to do.  While she's out fornicating with every dude she can find out in the hills, and under the trees, He sits at home and sends her couriers with messages of devotion and love that are hers if she will just acknowledge that she has wronged Him (See Jeremiah 3:13), and then return to Him (v 14).  True love and diligent devotion, indeed!

So He goes on in verses 20 through 25 to lay out His kinky fantasy: His wife, who has treacherously slept with every other guy she can find, comes to the recognition that she had a good man at home all along.  She feels completely inadequate to return home to Him.  Where as before she could lie about her incredible transgressions and not feel the slightest remorse or even break a sweat on her forehead(see Jeremiah 3:3), she now feels nothing but shame and remorse (see Jeremiah 3:24-25.)

Beyond comprehension, the Great I Am does the unthinkable: He not only takes her back in, but heals all of the wounds she incurred while doing what a harlot does on her back (see Jeremiah 3:22.)

At the end of His mortal ministry, Jesus pronounced that greater love has no man than this: that He lay His life down for His friends.  Jeremiah is simply pointing out that the friend that He is lying His life down for, is his treacherous wife.  All in hopes that she will finally love Him.