Have you not just called to Me, ‘My Father, You are my friend from youth.
Parallel translations
- WEB Will you not from this time cry to me, ‘My Father, you are the guide of my youth?’
- KJV Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me, My father, thou art the guide of my youth?
- NKJV Will you not from this time cry to Me, ‘My Father, You are the guide of my youth?
- NASB “Have you not just now called to Me, ‘My Father, You are the friend of my youth?
- NLT Yet you say to me, ‘Father, you have been my guide since my youth.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
God appeals for them to call Him Father and guide of their youth. He longs for a restored relationship.
Overview
Yahweh asks whether they will now cry to Him, 'My Father, you are the guide of my youth.' Beneath the rebuke runs a tender appeal for the people to return to a childlike trust. The fatherhood of God toward His people anticipates the intimacy believers enjoy in Christ as adopted children.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 14
- Jer 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.
- Jer 3:19Then 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.
- Jer 31:9They 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.”
- Hos 2:15There 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.
- Ps 71:17O God, You have taught me from my youth, and to this day I proclaim Your marvelous deeds.
- Jer 2:27say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ For they have turned their backs to Me and not their faces, yet in the time of trouble they beg, ‘Rise up and save us!’
- Jer 31:18–20I 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.
- Prov 2:17who abandons the partner of her youth and forgets the covenant of her God.
- Mal 2:14Yet you ask, “Why?” It is because the LORD has been a witness between you and the wife of your youth, against whom you have broken faith, though she is your companion and your wife by covenant.
- Hos 14:1–3Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, for you have stumbled by your iniquity.
- Prov 1:4To impart prudence to the simple and knowledge and discretion to the young,
- Ps 71:5For You are my hope, O Lord GOD, my confidence from my youth.
- Ps 48:14For this God is our God forever and ever; He will be our guide even till death.
- Ps 119:9How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to Your word.
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Commentaries & study tools
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Hebrew/Greek interlinear, word definitions, and cross-references for this verse.
Christ at the center
Against the failure of false shepherds Jeremiah promises the Righteous Branch, 'The LORD our righteousness,' and the new covenant written on the heart and sealed in the blood of Christ.
How Jeremiah 3:4 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Hebrew word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.