Jeremiah 31:31-34

See introd. summary to the section. These vv. are quoted in Hebrews 8:9-12. Cp. Ezekiel 37:23-27. We have here the announcement of a new covenant which should supersede that made at the time of the Exodus from Egypt, differing from it (i) in permanence, (ii) in the principle by which it should be maintained unbroken. The Law consisted of duties imposed upon the people from without; the spring of action which should produce willing conformity to the new covenant was to be wholly within. Deuteronomy 30:6 speaks of the people's hearts being circumcised to love the Lord with all their heart and soul, but here the motive power that belongs to the new dispensation is for the first time made plain. The sense of forgiveness (Jeremiah 31:34) through God's grace shall call out such a spirit of gratitude as shall ensure a willing service, depending on inward not outward motives, based on love, not fear. The new covenant therefore is at once to replace the old (see Hebrews 8:8-12), but, though new in springs of action, it is to be still the same in substance. Thus the passage forms the climax of Jeremiah's teaching. The religious failure hitherto consisted in gross and repeated acts of disobedience to the outward ordinances imposed on Israel as a national unit. It was necessary in future to get behind ordinances to the source itself of the evil so as to reach the individual heart. If that heart was attuned to the recognition of its relationship to God, all would thenceforth be right. When the inward hostility to the externally imposed law has been changed to a ready conformity, because that law is recognised as no longer an outside matter, but has become part of the individual's own personality, then the Divine and human wills become identified. Religion will now have acquired a title, no longer superficial, to the name national; for each individual will be renewed in heart. Thus "while other prophets did much to interpret religion and to enforce its demands, [Jeremiah] transformed the very conception of religion itself" (Peake, I. 46).

The genuineness of the passage has been doubted or denied by various commentators from Movers onwards, and it is rejected, though very reluctantly, by Du., but on grounds which are shewn by Co. to be quite inconclusive. Du. considers it to be the production of an author of late date, zealous for the faithful observance of legal ordinances, and he denies the spiritual character of the conceptions which the words seem plainly to indicate. But the contrast is a marked one between the external nature of the Sinaitic legislation, and the internal change in the individual's personality, involved in the New Covenant which is to take its place. What was that Sinaitic legislation in Jeremiah's view? Ch. 7 tells us that it was, in a word, the Decalogue (see specially Jeremiah 31:9), written with the finger of God. These precepts are now to be written in men's hearts, and so to ensure an intuitive obedience, "the living pulse-beat of an automatic morality" (Co.).

The very brevity of the utterance (even if we admit the possibility of a slight amount of modification by Baruch or others) supports the acceptance of it as genuine. Its date will naturally be the period of the overthrow of the old régimein the destruction of Jerusalem (b.c. 586). Under circumstances such as these the prophet gives utterance to what is surely a sublime triumph of faith, as he raises on the ruins of the old a new and more spiritual structure.