Jeremiah 3:14

Turn, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am married unto you: and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion:

I am married, [ baa`al (H1166) bª-...] - literally, I am Lord, i:e., husband to you, (so Jeremiah 31:32, "My covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them;" cf. Hosea 2:19; Isaiah 54:5, "Thy Maker is thine Husband," etc.) Gesenius following the Septuagint version of Jeremiah 31:32, and Paul's quotation of it, Hebrews 8:9, "I regarded them not," translates, 'I have rejected you;' so the corresponding Arabic and the idea of lordship, may pass into that of looking down upon, and so rejecting. But the Septuagint, in this passage, translates, 'I will be Lord over you' And the 'for' has much more force in the English version than in, that of Gesenius. 'THOUGH I have rejected you,' is the translation of Rosenmuller: Hengstenberg and Maurer object to this rendering [of kiy (H3588)] as not good Hebrew; but undoubted instances occur of this sense, as in Daniel 9:9. But I prefer 'For I am husband unto you.'

I will take you one of a city - though but one or two Israelites were in a (foreign) city they shall not be forgotten; all shall be restored (Amos 9:9). So in the spiritual Israel, God gathers one convert hers, another there into Church: not the least one is lost (Matthew 18:14; Romans 11:5. "There is a remnant according to the election of grace;" cf. Jeremiah 24:5).

Family - a clan or tribe.