1. Jeremiah 3:2 (ESV)
  2. Exposition

Why must they lift their eyes to the bare heights?

Jeremiah 3:2 (ESV)

2 Lift up your eyes to the bare heights, and see! Where have you not been ravished? By the waysides you have sat awaiting lovers like an Arab in the wilderness. You have polluted the land with your vile whoredom.

The bare heights is a reference to the many places, normally on hill tops, where the Lord’s people had taken part in the worship of other gods. The Lord is calling on them to consider the overwhelming evidence of their unfaithful behaviour: Where have you not been ravished? The implication of this question is that there seems to be virtually no place in the land where the people have not offered themselves to other gods. As Jeremiah 2:1–37 has made so graphically clear, much of this worship involved sexual immorality. Judah has allowed itself to be ravished by another even while married to the Lord.