The Hyperlinked Bible
Intertextuality Pair
Allusion
Later text
Jeremiah 3:1BSB
"If a man divorces his wife and she leaves him to marry another, can he ever return to her? Would not such a land be completely defiled? But you have played the harlot with many lovers—and you would return to Me?" declares the LORD.
Earlier text
If a man marries a woman, but she becomes displeasing to him because he finds some indecency in her, he may write her a certificate of divorce, hand it to her, and send her away from his house.
Jeremiah 3:1 directly alludes to the Deuteronomic divorce law, citing its principle: a woman divorced and remarried cannot return to her first husband because the land would be "defiled" (חָנַף, chanaf). Deuteronomy 24:1 establishes the legal procedure — a man gives his wife a certificate of divorce (סֵפֶר כְּרִיתֻת, sefer keritut) — and Jeremiah applies this framework metaphorically to the Yahweh-Israel relationship. Israel has "played the harlot with many lovers" (3:1), yet Yahweh still extends the astonishing invitation to return (3:12), transcending the very divorce law He Himself established. The prophetic use of the Deuteronomic law creates a powerful tension between legal justice and covenant grace — by the law's standard Israel is beyond reconciliation, yet God's chesed exceeds the law's requirements. Deuteronomy 24:1 grounds the original divorce on finding "some indecency" (עֶרְוַת דָּבָר, 'ervat davar) in the wife, the very ground of complaint Israel's harlotry so grossly exceeds.