Jeremiah 31:20:  “[Is] Ephraim my dear son? [is he] a pleasant child? for since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still: therefore my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the LORD.”

Most Christian commentators will say that God uses the name Ephraim to represent the Northern ten tribes of Israel, and sometimes to speak of the entire Jewish nation.  However, I have not read any Christian commentators that really explain why God would use the name Ephraim rather than one of the other tribes like Reuben or Gad.  I Chronicles 7:22 describes Ephraim, the person, as an affectionate and tenderhearted person.  Perhaps God is appealing to the tenderhearted and sensitive nature of His people when he calls them Ephraim. The Jewish Talmud explains that God uses the name Ephraim when he is speaking of Israel as a nation that has broken his heart.

Next to God’s expression of love for His people in the Book of Hosea this verse is probably the most tender expression of God’s love that I have read in the original Hebrew.  Our English translation just does not do it justice.  I mean my bowels are troubled for him? Oh come on, like ick!  I admit that is a literal translation and if you like literal translations then go for it. I would rather put it into terms that are more acceptable to my personal modern Western cultural thinking.

Yet even in our modern Western Cultural thinking this is very difficult to express as 21^st century Western man has lost much of its sentimentality in the last 100 years.  I am no anthropologist but I can read our works of literature from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s and compare it to our literature of today.   I mean compare one of  Gershwin’s songs like, Someone To Watch Over Me from the 1926 musical Oh, Kay:  “I’m a little lamb whose lost in the woods, I know that I could always be good to someone who would watch over me”  to one of Taylor Swifts hits songs today.  Or E L James book Fifty Shades of Grey to the gothic early 20^th century romance novels of Grace Livingston Hill.  We would listen to the music of one hundred years ago and the poetry of a hundred years ago and laugh at the sentimentality of the era.  Yet people in those days took it very seriously.

Since I am no anthropologist I can only speculate that the subtle change in our expression of sentimentality is due to our rapid paced society, or our technological advances that has reduced friendship to click of a mouse on a social media site. It may even be the advance of medical science where death is not an everyday occurrence as it was one hundred years ago. The reality that regardless of one’s age they could be healthy one day and dying of some disease the next day, a disease that has now been eradicated and we don’t even think of it,  made death something that was constantly on everyone’s mind. This would cause one to cherish their time with loved ones. They were more open to expressing their hearts than we are today.  I don’t know I just know I was born a hundred years too late in trying to write about passages of Scripture such as Jeremiah 31:20.  At least let me try.

God calls this nation which has broken His heart His dear son.  Some translations say darling son. This is a very tender loving expression.  The word yakir which is rendered as darling is used to express something that is rare and very precious. It is something that is priceless. If you have an article that was given to you by a loved one, it might be a cheap little trinket that your loved one only paid a few dollars for but to you it was a symbol of that person’s love, that trinket is priceless.  If it were stolen and you would make an insurance claim for it they would only pay you the few dollars that is was valued at, they could not pay you in dollars the real value of that article to you.  That is yakir.  Although Ephraim had sinned against God, broke His heart, they were still a yakir, a precious child to Him.

Then he says they are a pleasant child. Huh? Is that all the Hebrew word sh’shua means?   This word is used to express delight, and an object of great enjoyment. However from its Semitic root sha’a’ it means to be blinded.  This is a word used to describe a parent who is so blinded by their love for their child and a spouse for their mate that they fail to see their faults, all they see is their goodness and are blinded to their flaws.  Sha’a’ would be used to describe that wife who has a selfish, self-centered husband that chases after harlots.  When that wife is taken into an intervention and told that this guy is just bad news she will insist that he really is a very loving and caring person.  Although God is all knowing, He loves us so much that He would prefer to just blind Himself to our sins such that even before we sin, He has already forgiven us.  God doesn’t send us to hell, we send ourselves, we are like that cheating husband who just keeps chasing after the harlot and never realizing the loving person we have at home who is ready to forgive and embrace us.  It sounds crazy that a man will pursue harlots that will use him and abuse him over a loving wife waiting for him at home, but they do.  It is about as crazy as a man choosing demonic evil activities and hell rather than going home to a loving God.   It makes no sense except that people are just blinded to the love that is out there.

Then God says that He earnestly remembers them.  This is really the word zacar repeated two times.  When a word is repeated two times it is used for emphasis.  We read that He earnestly remembers us and we lightly pass over it.  This double zacar means that we are constantly on God’s mind. Every moment, every second of every day He is thinking on you, you alone.  His bowels are troubled over you. Yuck!  You want literal translation I will give you literal translation, His heart yearns for you.  No that is not even getting close.  It is the word racham repeated two times.  The most romantic, the deepest expression of love is found in the word racham.  At one point in the Psalms it is rendered as tender mercies and even that falls short of racham. Yet racham is repeated two times.  It is the picture of that wife sitting by the window watching every car that passes, hoping upon hope that one of those cars will be driven by the husband that she loves and that he is returning to her.  It the picture of that soldier who returns home from war and goes to the school room of his little child unannounced and when he enters that room his child see his father for the first time in many months and runs into his arms – racham racham.  It is the picture of when we are tired, battered and worn down from the struggles of this life and we fall into the arms of a God, a God whose heart we have broken, who has been yearning to just love us, to give us a hug, hold us and whisper to us, “Everything is ok now, it’s all forgiven, my Son died for those sins, it’s all ok now.”  Racham racham.