Commentaries:
The word "plead" almost sounds like God is down on His knees pleading with Israel to come back. However, this is not what He is doing. The word is much better translated "contend." "I will contend," because the setting here, beginning with verse 9, is a courtroom and God is the prosecuting attorney. He is bringing charges against His bride, His wife.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Where Is the Beast? (Part 7)
This passage is an intense survey of Judah's behavior in that period just before they went into captivity. In the next chapter God divorces Israel. This is like the final pleading or contention, the straw that broke the camel's back. The intensity of her drive to show disrespect for God is illustrated in the comparison of the dromedary and the wild ass in heat. Nobody can hold those female animals back when they are in heat! It is as if Israel was always in heat in order to commit adultery in departing from God.
We have to make the connection that we are called from a nation cut from the same cloth, and in us is the same potential for unbelieving stubbornness and fickleness, whose fruit is immature, irresponsible unfaithfulness to obligation. The wayward drive is actually in all of mankind, but Israel is more responsible than any other nation on earth because she has been given so much in the way of knowledge.
Satan has succeeded in deceiving the whole world. Among these deceptions is that modern Israel is Christian. But Israel has never been truly Christian. It presents a counterfeit to the world, and it has nonetheless spread its wine over the entire world, drugging it with its poor example, and inducing much to the world to follow.
This particular deception that Israel is Christian is dangerous to true church members since the vast majority of the people of God are in Israelitish nations, and it has the power to make us feel an affinity with Israel's brand of false Christianity. But that affinity might just lure us into producing the same tolerant, non-judgmental, politically correct, multi-cultural Laodiceanism commonly displayed in the Israelitish country. It hinders the separation from the world required of us by making us feel a lingering sense of oneness with Israel.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Where Is the Beast? (Part 7)
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