For a number of years, I’ve been using the analogy of marriage to explain apostasy. Turns out I wasn’t the first. Jeremiah does too.

Jeremiah uses some variation of the root shub (“turn, return, turn away”) nearly 50 times in his prophecy. One of the specific words is meshubah, translated at times as “faithless,” but more literally “turning back,” “backsliding” or even (as in some English translations) as “apostasy.”

The word is used a number of times in Jeremiah 3, where it almost becomes an epithetic for Israel: Israel is “Apostasy Israel,” the personification and embodiment of apostasy (3:6, 8, 11, 12).

This description of Israel’s backsliding is set in a marital context. Israel is the bride that has turned harlot, “turning away” from the husband that she should face, offering herself as a prostitute to every man on every high hill and under every trysting tree. Judah sees and does not change, but instead becomes more faithless even than Apostasy Israel. As a result, Yahweh threatens to serve Judah with a “writ of divorce” as He has already done for Israel (v. 8; cf. Deuteronomy 24:1ff). Apostasy thus is marital infidelity, followed by a final end to the marriage with a divorce certificate.

It is interesting, and no accident that the Greek word for “apostasy” (apostasia) and for “writ of divorce” (apostasion) are from the same root.

This helps us a lot to grasp the meaning of apostasy. First, it’s clear that apostasy, turning away, is real, though in Jeremiah 3 it’s not final (cf. vv. 11-14). Second, it’s also clear that apostasy is turning away from real love, from a genuine and even intimate relationship, the relationship of marriage. Apostasy is defection from the legal arrangement of matrimony, but it is also betrayal of an interpersonal relationship. Apostasy Israel turns away after having once loved her Lord, and turns away from His relentless love for her (cf. Jeremiah 2:1-3).