Scripture Daily

Context No. 865 of 4322 · Jeremiah

Context · Reflection

Jeremiah 31:30-40: in context

30But everyone will die for his own iniquity. Every man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth will be set on edge. 31“Behold, the days come,” says the LORD, “that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah, 32not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, which covenant of mine they broke, although I was a husband to them,” says the LORD. 33“But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” says the LORD: “I will put my law in their inward parts, and I will write it in their heart. I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34They will no longer each teach his neighbor, and every man teach his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD;’ for they will all know me, from their least to their greatest,” says the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” 35The LORD, who gives the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, who stirs up the sea, so that its waves roar— the LORD of Armies is his name, says: 36“If these ordinances depart from before me,” says the LORD, “then the offspring of Israel also will cease from being a nation before me forever.” 37The LORD says: “If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, then I will also cast off all the offspring of Israel for all that they have done,” says the LORD. 38“Behold, the days come,” says the LORD, “that the city will be built to the LORD from the tower of Hananel to the gate of the corner. 39The measuring line will go out further straight onward to the hill Gareb, and will turn toward Goah. 40The whole valley of the dead bodies and of the ashes, and all the fields to the brook Kidron, to the corner of the horse gate toward the east, will be holy to the LORD. It will not be plucked up or thrown down any more forever.”

Jeremiah is prophesying in the last years of Judah, with Babylon closing in and the old covenant in ruins because the people broke it. Into that failure God announces something new: a covenant he will make after those days, not carved on stone tablets they can walk away from but written on the heart. I will put my law in their inward parts, he says, and I will be their God, and I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more.

The difference from Sinai is the whole point. That covenant was external, handed down, and broken almost at once. This one God locates inside a person, so that knowing him is no longer a matter of one neighbor teaching another but of everyone from least to greatest knowing him directly. And it rests not on their performance but on his forgiveness, on his decision to remember their sin no more. Then he ties the promise to the fixed order of creation: as surely as the sun rules the day and the moon and stars the night, Israel will not cease to be his people. If you could measure the heavens or dig out the foundations of the earth, then he might cast them off, but not otherwise.

This is the covenant Jesus takes up at the last supper when he speaks of the new covenant in his blood. Do I still relate to God as a set of external rules I keep breaking, or have I let him write his law on the heart where I actually live?

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