Jeremiah 3:4

Parents and children Prayer

² “Lift up your eyes to the barren heights and see. Is there any place where you have not been violated? You sat beside the highways waiting for your lovers, like a nomad in the desert. You have defiled the land with your prostitution and wickedness.

³ Therefore the showers have been withheld, and no spring rains have fallen. Yet you have the brazen look of a prostitute; you refuse to be ashamed.

Have you not just called to Me, ‘My Father, You are my friend from youth.

⁵ Will He be angry forever? Will He be indignant to the end?’ This you have spoken, but you keep doing all the evil you can.”

⁶ Now in the days of King Josiah, the LORD said to me, “Have you seen what faithless Israel has done? She has gone up on every high hill and under every green tree to prostitute herself there.

This was said to Israel at a particular time, so it is wise to read it together with the surrounding text. Do read the surrounding verses too, because the context often says more than a single verse.

Compare

BSB: Have you not just called to Me, ‘My Father, You are my friend from youth.
KJV: Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth?
WEB: Will you not from this time cry to me, ‘My Father, you are the guide of my youth!’?
ASV: Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My Father, thou art the guide of my youth?
DARBY: Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth?
BLB: Have you not from now called out to Me, ‘My Father, You [are] the companion of my youth?

ÅB: Har du ikke nettopp nå ropt til meg: Min far, du er min ungdoms venn?
OTB: Har du ikke nettopp ropt til meg: ‘Min Far, du er min ungdoms følgesvenn,
B1930: Har du ikke nettop nu ropt til mig: Min far, du er min ungdoms venn?

Study notes (Tyndale)

Original text and word study

Cross references

Jeremiah 2:2
“Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem that this is what the LORD says: ‘I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed Me in the wilderness, in a land not sown.
Read in context
Jeremiah 3:19
Then I said, ‘How I long to make you My sons and give you a desirable land, the most beautiful inheritance of all the nations!’ I thought you would call Me ‘Father’ and never turn away from following Me.
Read in context
Jeremiah 31:9
They will come with weeping, and by their supplication I will lead them; I will make them walk beside streams of waters, on a level path where they will not stumble. For I am Israel’s Father, and Ephraim is My firstborn.”
Read in context
Proverbs 2:17
who abandons the partner of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God.
Read in context
Hosea 2:15
There I will give back her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor into a gateway of hope. There she will respond as she did in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.
Read in context
Jeremiah 2:27
say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ For they have turned their backs to Me and not their faces, yet in the time of trouble they beg, ‘Rise up and save us!’
Read in context
Psalms 71:17
O God, You have taught me from my youth, and to this day I proclaim Your marvelous deeds.
Read in context
Jeremiah 31:18–20
I have surely heard Ephraim’s moaning: ‘You disciplined me severely, like an untrained calf. Restore me, that I may return, for You are the LORD my God.
Read in context