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 Jer 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 has shown, that leb, in the Arabic language, signifies to loath and abhor, and so to disregard; and Kimchi 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 Zec 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.
Not. Miscell. in Port. Mesis, p. 9. In Jer. xxxi. 32. & Sepher Shorashim, rad.