Why must Judah break their fallow ground and sow not among the thorns?

What is required of Israel, represented by the faithless Judah, is the real repentance described in Jeremiah 3:21–4:2. Jeremiah uses an analogy from agriculture to explain what this means. The analogy involves the preparation of a new field so that a crop can be sown.¹ This is an analogy already used by the prophet Hosea (Hosea 10:12), and Jesus himself uses a similar analogy (Mark 4:3–8).  The first problem with this new soil or fallow ground is hardness. Unless the ground is broken up the seed will not penetrate and there will be no new life.² The second problem is that the new ground has weeds or thorns and the new seed must not be sown among the thorns; otherwise, its growth will be strangled. The point Jeremiah is making is that repentance for Judah means turning away completely from all of her old spiritual ways. Repentance does not simply mean the reworking of old ways, but new ground has to be broken. For a new relationship with the Lord to take root and flourish, Judah’s hardness and resistance to the Lord has to be overcome, and her old sinful ways have to be removed: The whole future was threatened by the legacy of the past, and only a complete and radical new beginning would be sufficient to save the nation.³