True repentance means sincere confession of sin. From the very beginning, Israel, and now Judah, have sinned against the Lord by not obeying his voice. They did not listen to his commands and promises. This is their shame which they must confess and acknowledge: Sin would be their bed, humiliation their blanket, but they could not claim that someone else had done this to them. They had made their own bed and must lie in it
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Sadly, the sincere, honest, and powerful words of repentance in Jeremiah 3:22–25 are never actually spoken by Judah. Jeremiah places these words on the lips of the people as a way to urge them to repent, but as a nation they never do. This is even more tragic in the light of Jeremiah 4:1–2, where Jeremiah describes how the Lord would respond to this kind of repentance.
25 Let us lie down in our shame, and let our dishonor cover us. For we have sinned against the LORD our God, we and our fathers, from our youth even to this day, and we have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God.”