The beginning of this sentence can be translated as I said
or as I thought.
In other words, the Lord can either be commanding Israel to call him My father
or he could be expressing his longing for what he intends for his people.1 The overall tone of the section seems to favour the idea of longing rather than command.2 Marriage has been the dominant metaphor used by Jeremiah so far to express Israel’s relationship with the Lord, but here the relationship of father and child is used. The metaphors of the Lord as husband or father both reveal different aspects of the covenant relationship. In Jeremiah 3:19 the Lord is expressing his deep disappointment that his son
did not call him My father.
Instead, they had only used it in hypocrisy in times of crises (Jeremiah 3:3) and not as an expression of covenant faithfulness. The Lord longed that his son “would not turn from following me," but sadly Israel had done exactly that.3
19 “‘I said, How I would set you among my sons, and give you a pleasant land, a heritage most beautiful of all nations. And I thought you would call me, My Father, and would not turn from following me.