Culture: If the scenario I have sketched is accurate, these words are poignant. Jacob tells women facing a life in a foreign village as plural wives to turn to Yahweh and to feast upon his love, promising them that, if they are firm-minded, they may feel that love “forever.”
If I am correct, Jacob’s audience includes both wealthy traders and also women whom they will “trade” away to create economic alliances, although for the women, the effect is the same as if they were being traded like merchandise or enslaved. They are “led away into captivity” where they will be in a new culture, expected to practice a new religion, and married according to different rules than they were raised with. Jacob enjoins those believers being exiled from their community of belief to pray and to feel Yahweh’s love. It must have been very reassuring for them to hear that they could feel Yahweh’s love forever, despite their isolation in a foreign setting.