To RETURN, turn back, repent — the central verb of the prophets, and the engine of Zechariah 1. 'Return (shuvu) to me, and I will return (ashuvah) to you' (1:3) makes repentance reciprocal: not a work that earns God's favor but a turning that God both initiates and answers (Malachi 3:7 quotes the same line). The word threads the chapter — the fathers who would not turn (1:4), the fathers who finally turned back and confessed (1:6), and God himself who has 'returned to Jerusalem with compassion' (1:16). Its noun teshuvah is the Hebrew word for repentance to this day. Jeremiah 29:14 stacks it on itself — ve-shavti et-shevutkhem, 'I will turn back your turning' — a doubling every English version flattens to 'restore your fortunes' or 'bring you back from captivity'. ⚠ In Psalm 23 the same root frames the psalm's second half: at v3 he 'brings my life BACK' (yeshovev, polel) and at v6 'I shall come BACK to the house of Jehovah' (ve-shavti) — if the Masoretic pointing stands, since those consonants can also be read as yashav, 'dwell,' which is what nearly every version prints, erasing the frame. ⚠ In Jeremiah 18 the chapter's FIRST turning is not the nation's: it is the potter's, who 'turned' and remade the vessel (18:4), before anyone is asked to turn (18:8, 11). → first discussed at Zechariah 1:3