must be the case with the prophecy under consideration. The
condition in which the Jews are, up to the present day, is described in
both of these prophecies with remarkable clearness; and hence we may
most confidently entertain [Pg 287] the hope, that there shall be a
fulfilment also of that which, in them as well as in the Song of
Solomon, has been foretold regarding the glorious issue of these
dealings of God.

Ver. 5. "_Afterwards shall the children of Israel return and seek the
Lord their God, and David their king, and shall tremble to the Lord and
to His goodness in the end of the days._"

[Hebrew: iwbv] must not by any means be regarded as modifying [Hebrew:
bqwv], so that both the verbs would constitute only one verbal idea.
This must be objected to, not only from the arguments already stated in
the remarks on chap. ii. 11, but, most decidedly, on account of the
parallel passage, chap. ii. 9, "I will go and return to my first
husband." Compare chap. vi. 1: "Come and let us return unto the Lord;"
v. 15, where the Lord says, "I will go and return to My place until
they become guilty and seek My face; in their affliction they will seek
Me;" Jer. l. 4: "In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, the
children of Israel shall _come_, they and the children of Judah
together, weeping will they come, and seek the Lord their God,"--a
passage which, like Jer. xxx. 9, points to the one before us in a
manner not to be mistaken; Is. x. 21: "The remnant shall _return_, the
remnant of Jacob, unto the mighty God." The text, and the parallel
passages, most clearly indicate what is to be considered as the object
of their return, namely, the Lord their God, and David their king, from
whom they had so shamefully apostatized; so that those interpreters who
here think of a return to Canaan do not deserve a refutation. The
words, "Jehovah their God," at the same time lay open the delusion of
the Israelites (who imagined that they could still possess the true
God, in the idol which they called Jehovah), and rebuke their
ingratitude. _Calvin_ says, "God had offered Himself to them, yea. He
had had familiar intercourse with them,--He had, as it were, brought
them up on His bosom just as a father does his sons. The prophet,
therefore, indirectly rebukes, in these words, their stupendous
wickedness." The God of the Israelites, as well as the God of the Jews
after they had rejected Christ, stood to the God of Israel in the same
relati