Bible Strands
Jeremiah 3:4
Have you not just called to Me, ‘My Father, You are my friend from youth.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — God addresses Jerusalem immediately after withholding rain due to their brazen, unashamed rebellion, right before they rhetorically ask if He will remain angry forever.
The words — אַלּ֥וּף ('a.Luf) translates literally as close friend or companion, and נְעֻרַ֖/י (ne.'u.Ra/i) means youth or youthful years. These terms record the exact covenant language the people once used to address God.
The thread — The verse's covenant vocabulary runs through Jeremiah 2:2 on early devotion, Jeremiah 3:19 where God promises to make them sons and grant an inheritance, and Jeremiah 31:9 where He vows to lead them beside streams of water.
Why it lands — The text confronts the audience by placing their own past covenant words against their present refusal to repent, demanding acknowledgment that verbal loyalty cannot mask continued evil.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth?
Cross-references
- Jeremiah 2:2 “Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem that this is what the LORD says: ‘I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed Me in the wilderness, in a land not sown.
- Jeremiah 3:19 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.
- Jeremiah 31:9 They will come with weeping, and by their supplication I will lead them; I will make them walk beside streams of waters, on a level path where they will not stumble. For I am Israel’s Father, and Ephraim is My firstborn.”
- Psalms 71:17 O God, You have taught me from my youth, and to this day I proclaim Your marvelous deeds.
- Proverbs 2:17 who abandons the partner of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God.
- Jeremiah 2:27 say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ They have turned their backs to Me and not their faces. Yet in the time of trouble, they say, ‘Rise up and save us!’
- Jeremiah 31:18 I have surely heard Ephraim’s moaning: ‘You disciplined me severely, like an untrained calf. Restore me, that I may return, for You are the LORD my God.
- Hosea 2:15 There I will give back her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor into a gateway of hope. There she will respond as she did in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt.
- Psalms 48:14 For this God is our God forever and ever; He will be our guide even till death.
- Psalms 71:5 For You are my hope, O Lord GOD, my confidence from my youth.