Jeremiah 31:3

Everlasting is doing something specific, and it works in both directions.

We hear the word and think of the future — love that will not stop. Jeremiah's point runs backwards as well. If the love has no end, it also has no beginning, which means there is no date on which it started, and therefore no event that caused it. It did not begin when Israel behaved well, and it will not end when they do not.

That matters enormously given who is being addressed. This is a nation in the process of being dismantled — Jerusalem under threat, deportations underway, the prophet himself in and out of prison for saying so. Whatever love is being described here is not a response to the current performance.

And the second clause explains the mechanism: therefore with loving kindness have I drawn you. The verb is one of pulling — the word used for drawing water from a well, or hauling something toward you. It is not gentle, but it is not force either. It describes traction.

What draws is loving kindness, which is Hebrew's covenant word: loyalty, the faithfulness of someone who stays bound. So the rope in this image is not made of feeling. It is made of a commitment, and it is being used to pull.