Jeremiah 2:10, commentary and pictures

Jeremiah 2:10 belongs to the rebuke of backslidden Judah and Israel as the people espoused to the Lord, exposing their unfaithfulness while God still calls them to return to Him. The chapter lays bare the wickedness of God's own people as worse than that of the heathen.

The verse commands a diligent search from the isles of Chittim in the west to Kedar in the east, distant lands lying in opposite directions, to see whether such a thing has happened. Distant nations are to be examined to show that Israel's abandonment of God is an exceptional and shameful betrayal. The search is whether any nation has ever exchanged its gods for other gods, and the steady, unchanging loyalty of the nations to their false gods proves the uniqueness of Israel's act. That contrast makes Israel's abandonment of the Lord astonishing, exceptional, shameful, and worse than the course of the heathen.

Israel exchanged divine glory for what cannot profit. That betrayal is two evils: forsaking God the fountain of living waters, and turning to broken cisterns that can hold no water. The turning condemned is the pure bride leaving her divine Spouse to seek other lovers among worldly powers and nations, such as leaning upon Egypt and turning to Assyria. It is the daughter of Zion becoming a harlot when she seeks the world's help and honors instead of relying on God, through an unlawful attachment to the world.

Any union of the church with the world or with the state in any way is fornication and adultery against God and departure from Him. That spiritual unfaithfulness, likened to harlotry, brings confusion. It is a blind course that promises much but ends in being spoiled, made naked, stripped bare, and destroyed. The same forsaking occurs when readers turn from the Bible and the divine mind to other human minds in literature, choosing a source that cannot satisfy.