Jeremiah 3:19
New International Version
“I myself said, “’How gladly would I treat you like my children and give you a pleasant land, the most beautiful inheritance of any nation.’ I thought you would call me ‘Father’ and not turn away from following me.

New Living Translation
“I thought to myself, ‘I would love to treat you as my own children!’ I wanted nothing more than to give you this beautiful land— the finest possession in the world. I looked forward to your calling me ‘Father,’ and I wanted you never to turn from me.

English Standard Version
“‘I said, How I would set you among my sons, and give you a pleasant land, a heritage most beautiful of all nations. And I thought you would call me, My Father, and would not turn from following me.

Berean Standard Bible
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.

King James Bible
But I said, How shall I put thee among the children, and give thee a pleasant land, a goodly heritage of the hosts of nations? and I said, Thou shalt call me, My father; and shalt not turn away from me.

New King James Version
“But I said: ‘How can I put you among the children And give you a pleasant land, A beautiful heritage of the hosts of nations?’ “And I said: ‘You shall call Me, “My Father,” And not turn away from Me.’

New American Standard Bible
“Then I said, ‘How I would set you among My sons And give you a pleasant land, The most beautiful inheritance of the nations!’ And I said, ‘You shall call Me, My Father, And not turn away from following Me.’

NASB 1995
“Then I said, ‘How I would set you among My sons And give you a pleasant land, The most beautiful inheritance of the nations!’ And I said, ‘You shall call Me, My Father, And not turn away from following Me.’

NASB 1977
“Then I said, ‘How I would set you among My sons, And give you a pleasant land, The most beautiful inheritance of the nations!’ And I said, ‘You shall call Me, My Father, And not turn away from following Me.’

Legacy Standard Bible
“Then I said, ‘How I would set you among My sons And give you a pleasant land, The most beautiful inheritance of the nations!’ And I said, ‘You shall call Me, “My Father,” And not turn away from following Me.’

Amplified Bible
“Then I said, ‘How [gloriously and honorably] I would set you among My children And give you a pleasant land—a wonderful heritage, The most beautiful inheritance of the nations!’ And I said, ‘You shall call Me, My Father And not turn away from following Me.’

Christian Standard Bible
I thought, “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 will call me ‘My Father’ and never turn away from me.”

Holman Christian Standard Bible
I thought: 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 will call Me, my Father, and never turn away from Me.

American Standard Version
But I said, How I will put thee among the children, and give thee a pleasant land, a goodly heritage of the hosts of the nations! and I said, Ye shall call me My Father, and shall not turn away from following me.

Aramaic Bible in Plain English
And I have said: "I shall count you among the children and I shall give to you the chosen land and the inheritance of the hosts of armies of the nations.” And I said: “You shall call me ‘My Father’, and you shall not turn from behind me.”

Brenton Septuagint Translation
And I said, So be it, Lord, for thou saidst I will set thee among children, and will give thee a choice land, the inheritance of the Almighty God of the Gentiles: and I said, Ye shall call me Father; and ye shall not turn away from me.

Contemporary English Version
I have always wanted to treat you as my children and give you the best land, the most beautiful on earth. I wanted you to call me "Father" and not turn from me.

Douay-Rheims Bible
But I said: How shall I put thee among the children, and give thee a lovely land, the goodly inheritance of the armies of the Gentiles? And I said: Thou shalt call me father and shalt cease to walk after me.

English Revised Version
But I said, How shall I put thee among the children, and give thee a pleasant land, a goodly heritage of the hosts of the nations? and I said, Ye shall call me My father; and shall not turn away from following me.

GOD'S WORD® Translation
"I wanted to treat you like children and give you a pleasant land, the most beautiful property among the nations. I thought that you would call me Father and wouldn't turn away from me.

Good News Translation
The LORD says, "Israel, I wanted to accept you as my child and give you a delightful land, the most beautiful land in all the world. I wanted you to call me father and never again turn away from me.

International Standard Version
"I said, 'How I wanted to treat you like children, and give you a pleasant land, the most beautiful inheritance of the nations.' I said, 'You will call me, my father, and won't turn back from following me.'

JPS Tanakh 1917
But I said: 'How would I put thee among the sons, And give thee a pleasant land, The goodliest heritage of the nations!' And I said: 'Thou shalt call Me, My father; And shalt not turn away from following Me.'

Literal Standard Version
And I have said, How do I put you among the sons, | And give a desirable land to you, | A beautiful inheritance of the hosts of nations, | And I say, You call Me—My Father, | And you do not turn back from after Me.

Majority Standard Bible
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.

New American Bible
I thought: How I would like to make you my children! So I gave you a pleasant land, the most beautiful heritage among the nations! You would call me, “My Father,” I thought, and you would never turn away from me.

NET Bible
"I thought to myself, 'Oh what a joy it would be for me to treat you like a son! What a joy it would be for me to give you a pleasant land, the most beautiful piece of property there is in all the world!' I thought you would call me, 'Father' and would never cease being loyal to me.

New Revised Standard Version
I thought how I would set you among my children, and give you a pleasant land, the most beautiful heritage of all the nations. And I thought you would call me, My Father, and would not turn from following me.

New Heart English Bible
"But I said, 'How I would put you among the children, and give you a pleasant land, the most beautiful inheritance of all the nations.' and I said, 'You shall call me "My Father," and shall not turn away from following me.'

Webster's Bible Translation
But I said, How shall I put thee among the children, and give thee a pleasant land, a goodly heritage of the hosts of nations? and I said, Thou shalt call me, My father; and shalt not turn away from me.

World English Bible
“But I said, ‘How I desire to put you among the children, and give you a pleasant land, a goodly heritage of the armies of the nations!’ and I said, ‘You shall call me “My Father”, and shall not turn away from following me.’

Young's Literal Translation
And I have said, How do I put thee among the sons, And give to thee a desirable land, A beauteous inheritance of the hosts of nations, And I say, My father -- ye do call to Me, And from after Me ye do not turn back.

Additional Translations ...
Audio Bible



Context
Invitation to Repentance
18In those days the house of Judah will walk with the house of Israel, and they will come together from the land of the north to the land that I gave to your fathers as an inheritance. 19Then 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. 20But as a woman may betray her husband, so you have betrayed Me, O house of Israel,” declares the LORD.…

Cross References
1 Peter 1:17
Since you call on a Father who judges each one's work impartially, conduct yourselves in reverent fear during your stay as foreigners.

Psalm 16:6
The lines of my boundary have fallen in pleasant places; surely my inheritance is delightful.

Psalm 89:26
He will call to Me, 'You are my Father, my God, the Rock of my salvation.'

Psalm 106:24
They despised the pleasant land; they did not believe His promise.

Isaiah 63:16
Yet You are our Father, though Abraham does not know us and Israel does not acknowledge us. You, O LORD, are our Father; our Redeemer from Everlasting is Your name.

Jeremiah 3:4
Have you not just called to Me, 'My Father, You are my friend from youth.

Jeremiah 3:17
At that time Jerusalem will be called The Throne of the LORD, and all the nations will be gathered in Jerusalem to honor the name of the LORD. They will no longer follow the stubbornness of their evil hearts.


Treasury of Scripture

But I said, How shall I put you among the children, and give you a pleasant land, a goodly heritage of the hosts of nations? and I said, You shall call me, My father; and shall not turn away from me.

how

Jeremiah 5:7
How shall I pardon thee for this? thy children have forsaken me, and sworn by them that are no gods: when I had fed them to the full, they then committed adultery, and assembled themselves by troops in the harlots' houses.

Hosea 11:8
How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together.

put thee

Jeremiah 3:4
Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth?

Jeremiah 31:9,20
They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them: I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters in a straight way, wherein they shall not stumble: for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn…

John 1:11-13
He came unto his own, and his own received him not…

pleasant land.

Jeremiah 12:10
Many pastors have destroyed my vineyard, they have trodden my portion under foot, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.

Psalm 106:24
Yea, they despised the pleasant land, they believed not his word:

Ezekiel 20:6
In the day that I lifted up mine hand unto them, to bring them forth of the land of Egypt into a land that I had espied for them, flowing with milk and honey, which is the glory of all lands:

goodly heritage.

Proverbs 3:35
The wise shall inherit glory: but shame shall be the promotion of fools.

1 Peter 1:3,4
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, …

thou shalt

Jeremiah 3:4
Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth?

Isaiah 63:16
Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thou, O LORD, art our father, our redeemer; thy name is from everlasting.

Isaiah 64:8
But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.

shall not

Jeremiah 32:39,40
And I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever, for the good of them, and of their children after them: …

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Armies Beauteous Beautiful Children Desirable Desired Following Gladly Glory Goodliest Goodly Heritage Hosts Inheritance Nation Nations Pleasant Thought Treat Turn
Jeremiah 3
1. God's great mercy to Judah the polluted land
6. Judah is worse than Israel
12. The promises of the gospel to the penitent
20. Israel reproved, and called by God, makes a solemn confession of their sins














(19) But I said.--Better, And I said. There is no contrast with what precedes. The speaker is, of course, Jehovah. The How shall I put thee! is an exclamation rather than a question, the utterance of a promise as with an intensity of affirmation. Special stress is laid on the pronoun "I." The words have been rendered by some commentators, following the Targum, How shall I clothe thee with children?

A pleasant land.--Literally, as in the margin, a land of desire, i.e., desirable.

A goodly heritage of the hosts of nations.--More accurately, a heritage of the beauty of beauties (Hebrew for "chief beauty") of the nations. The English version rests on the assumption that the word translated "beauties" is the same as that elsewhere rendered "Sabaoth," or "hosts," which it closely resembles.

And I said.--Not, as in the English, the answer to a question, but the continuance of the same thought. God will treat repentant Israel as His child: He will lead Israel to trust Him as a father. The days of apostasy ("turning away") will then be over. The original Hebrew seems, to judge from the LXX. version, to have had the plural "ye shall call," "ye shall not turn away," the prophet passing from the collective unity to the individuals that composed it.

Verse 19. - The concluding words of the last verse have turned the current of the prophet's thoughts. "Unto your fathers." Yes; how bright the prospect when that ideal of Israel was framed in the Divine counsels! Condescending accommodation to human modes of thought; But I said fails to represent the relation of this verse to the preceding. Render, I indeed had said, and continue, How will I, etc. Put thee among the children. This is a very common rendering, but of doubtful correctness. It assumes that, from the point of view adopted (under Divine guidance) in the prophecies of Jeremiah, the various heathen nations were in the relation of sons to Jehovah. This is most improbable; indeed, even Exodus 4:22 does not really favor the doctrine of the universal fatherhood of God in the fullest sense of the word. Moreover, the pronoun rendered "thee" is in the feminine, indicating that the prophet has still in his mind the picture of Israel as Jehovah's bride. It would surely be an absurd statement that Jehovah would put his bride among the children! Render, therefore, How will I found thee with sons! comparing, for the use of the Hebrew verb, 1 Samuel 2:8, and for that of the preposition, Isaiah 54:11. It is, in fact, the familiar figure by which a family or a nation is likened to a building ("house of Abraham," "of Israel"). Jehovah's purpose had been to make Abraham's seed as the dust of the earth (Genesis 13:16). Instead of that, the restored exiles would be few, and weak in proportion, so that the Jewish Church of the early restoration period is represented as complaining, "We made not the land salvation, neither were inhabitants of the world produced" (Isaiah 26:18). A special Divine promise was needed to surmount this grave difficulty. A goodly... nations; rather, a heritage the most glorious among the nations. So in Ezekiel (Ezekiel 20:6, 15) Palestine is described as "the glory of all lands." The want of irrigation, and the denudation of the land, have no doubt much diminished the natural beauty and fertility of Palestine; but wherever moderate care is bestowed on the soil, how well it rewards it! Thou shalt call me... shalt not turn; rather, thou wilt call me... wilt not turn. It is the continuation of Jehovah's ideal for Israel. In response to his loving gifts, Israel would surely recognize him as her Father, and devote to him all her energies in willing obedience. Father is here used, not in the spiritual and individualizing sense of the New Testament, but in such a sense as a member of a primitive Israelitish family, in which the pairia potestas was fully carried out, could realize. The first instance of the individualizing use of the term is in Ecclus. 23:1-4. (For the Old Testament use, comp. Isaiah 1:2; Isaiah 63:16; Exodus 4:22; Hosea 11:1.)

Parallel Commentaries ...


Hebrew
Then I
וְאָנֹכִ֣י (wə·’ā·nō·ḵî)
Conjunctive waw | Pronoun - first person common singular
Strong's 595: I

said,
אָמַ֗רְתִּי (’ā·mar·tî)
Verb - Qal - Perfect - first person common singular
Strong's 559: To utter, say

‘How
אֵ֚יךְ (’êḵ)
Interjection
Strong's 349: How?, how!, where

I long to make you
אֲשִׁיתֵ֣ךְ (’ă·šî·ṯêḵ)
Verb - Qal - Imperfect - first person common singular | second person feminine singular
Strong's 7896: To put, set

My sons
בַּבָּנִ֔ים (bab·bā·nîm)
Preposition-b, Article | Noun - masculine plural
Strong's 1121: A son

and give
וְאֶתֶּן־ (wə·’et·ten-)
Conjunctive waw | Verb - Qal - Conjunctive imperfect - first person common singular
Strong's 5414: To give, put, set

you a desirable
חֶמְדָּ֔ה (ḥem·dāh)
Noun - feminine singular
Strong's 2532: Desire, delight

land,
אֶ֣רֶץ (’e·reṣ)
Noun - feminine singular construct
Strong's 776: Earth, land

the most beautiful
צְבִ֖י (ṣə·ḇî)
Noun - masculine singular construct
Strong's 6643: Splendor, a gazelle

inheritance
נַחֲלַ֥ת (na·ḥă·laṯ)
Noun - feminine singular construct
Strong's 5159: Something inherited, occupancy, an heirloom, an estate, patrimony, portion

of all
צִבְא֣וֹת (ṣiḇ·’ō·wṯ)
Noun - masculine plural construct
Strong's 6635: A mass of persons, reg, organized for, war, a campaign

the nations.’
גּוֹיִ֑ם (gō·w·yim)
Noun - masculine plural
Strong's 1471: A foreign nation, a Gentile, a troop of animals, a flight of locusts

I thought
וָאֹמַ֗ר (wā·’ō·mar)
Conjunctive waw | Verb - Qal - Consecutive imperfect - first person common singular
Strong's 559: To utter, say

you would call Me
תִּקְרְאִי־ (tiq·rə·’î-)
Verb - Qal - Imperfect - second person feminine singular
Strong's 7121: To call, proclaim, read

‘Father’
אָבִי֙ (’ā·ḇî)
Noun - masculine singular construct | first person common singular
Strong's 1: Father

and never
לֹ֥א (lō)
Adverb - Negative particle
Strong's 3808: Not, no

turn away
תָשֽׁוּבִי׃ (ṯā·šū·ḇî)
Verb - Qal - Imperfect - second person feminine singular
Strong's 7725: To turn back, in, to retreat, again

from following Me.
וּמֵאַחֲרַ֖י (ū·mê·’a·ḥă·ray)
Conjunctive waw, Preposition-m | first person common singular
Strong's 310: The hind or following part


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OT Prophets: Jeremiah 3:19 But I said How I will put (Jer.)
Jeremiah 3:18
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