Not according to the covenant that I made with their
fathers
The ancestors of the Jews at Mount Sinai:
in the day when I took then, by the hand to lead them out of the
land of Egypt;
which is mentioned, not only to observe the time when the former covenant was made with the Israelites, which was just upon their deliverance out of Egypt; but also to show their weakness and inability to have delivered themselves, and the tenderness of God towards them; they were like children, they could not help themselves when God took them by the hand, and brought them forth with an outstretched arm; and likewise to expose their ingratitude, and vindicate his conduct towards them:
because they continued not in my covenant;
though they promised, at the reading of it, that all that the Lord had said, they would hear and do; but their hearts were not right with God, and they were not steadfast in his covenant, and therefore their carcasses fell in the wilderness:
and I regarded them not, saith the Lord;
the words in ( Jeremiah 31:32 ) are very differently rendered in our translation, "although I was an husband unto them": and so it becomes an aggravation of their sin of ingratitude, in not continuing in his covenant: in the margin it is rendered interrogatively, "should I have continued an husband unto them?" that is, after they had so treated him, no; as if he should say, I will not behave towards them as such; I will reject them, and disregard them. The Chaldee paraphrase is just the reverse of the apostle's translation, "and I was well pleased with them": some render them, "I ruled over them", as a lord over his servants, in a very severe manner. Others, observing the great difference there is between the Hebrew text, and the apostle's version, have supposed a different Hebrew copy from the present, used by the Septuagint, or the apostle, in which, instead of (ytleb) , it was read either (ytlxb) , or (ytleg) ; but there is no need of such a supposition, since Dr. Pocock F7 has shown, that (leb) , in the Arabic language, signifies to loath and abhor, and so to disregard; and Kimchi F8 relates it as a rule laid down by his father, that wherever this word is used in construction with (b) , it is to be taken in an ill part, and signifies the same as (ytlxb) , "I have loathed"; in which sense that word is used in ( Zechariah 11:8 ) and so here, I have loathed them, I abhorred them, I rejected them, I took no care of them, disregarded them, left their house desolate, and suffered wrath to come upon them to the uttermost.