Jeremiah 31:31

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord,.... This refers to Gospel times, as is clear from the quotation and application by the apostle, Hebrews 8:8; and it is owned by a modern Jew (l) to belong to the times of the Messiah.

Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: The days come ... that I will make a new covenant with ... Israel ... Judah.

The apostle’ s application of this, , puts us out of doubt that this promise referred to the gospel times. It was not only made with the Jews, but all those who should be ingrafted into that olive; but it is said to be made with them, either as those two terms signify the whole church, with whom that covenant was made (they being the whole church which God had upon the earth at that time); or because they were the only people that had broken the first covenant, the Gentiles being strangers at that time to the covenant of promise, Ephesians 2 12, covenants being usually renewed upon one party’ s violation of them; or because it was at first made with the Jews, though it concerned also those that were afar off, even as many as the Lord should call, . Neither is it called the new covenant because it was as to the substance new, for it was made with Abraham, , and with the Jews, ,18. And it was then confirmed by the blood of Christ, though not actually shed, yet as he was the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world, whose blood was typified by the blood of the paschal lamb, and of all those living creatures killed for sacrifice, but upon many other accounts, thus enumerated by divines. 1. Because it was new in the notion of a testament, not confirmed by the actual death of Christ till gospel times. 2. Because it was revealed and preached after a new manner, more fully and particularly, plainly and clearly. 3. Because it had no such mixture of promises of temporal blessings as it had when first made with the laws. 4. Nor was the ceremonial law any part of it, as it was to the Jews, who were obliged to approve themselves God’ s people by a strict observance of that. 5. It was in the publication extended both to Jews and Gentiles, which the former was not. 6. In regard of the efficacy of the Spirit attending the publication of it, in a much fuller and larger manner, with the distribution of its gifts and graces, enabling souls to fulfil it. See more in the English Annotations upon this subject.

Jeremiah 31:31 Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah:Ver. 31. I will make a new covenant.] The same for substance with the former made with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and the Israelites in the wilderness; but new in respect of the form thereof, the manner of dispensing it - viz., more clearly, freely, effectually, and spiritually now under the gospel, than in those days of yore, when they saw the face of God only in that dark glass of the ceremonies; whereas we, with open face, &c.

(31) I will make a new covenant . . .—Both in itself, and as the germ of the future of the spiritual history of mankind, the words are of immense significance. It was to this that the Lord Jesus directed the thoughts of His disciples, as the prophecy which, above all other prophecies, He had come to fulfil by the sacrifice of Himself. In that “New Covenant” in His blood, which He solemnly proclaimed at the Last Supper (Matthew 26:28), and which was commemorated whenever men met to partake of the Supper of the Lord (1 Corinthians 11:25), there was latent the whole argument of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 8-10), the whole Gospel of justification by faith as proclaimed by St. Paul (Galatians 3:15-17). From it the Church took the title of the New Covenant, the New Testament, which it gave to the collected writings of the Apostolic age. This title in its turn gave the name of the Old Testament to the collected writings which recorded how “in sundry times and divers manners” God had spoken in time past to Israel. The promise is too commonly dealt with as standing by itself, without reference to the sequence of thought in which we find it placed. That sequence, however, is not hard to trace. The common proverb about the sour grapes had set the prophet thinking on the laws of God’s dealings with men. He felt that something more was needed to restrain men from evil than the thought that they might be transmitting evil to their children’s children—something more even than the thought of direct personal responsibility, and of a perfectly righteous retribution. And that something was to be found in the idea of a law—not written on tablets of stone, not threatening and condemning from without, and denouncing punishment on the transgressors and their descendants, but written on heart and spirit (2 Corinthians 3:3-6). It is noticeable, as showing how like thoughts were working in the minds of the two prophets, that in Ezekiel also the promise of a “new heart and new spirit” comes in close sequence upon the protest against the adage about the “children’s teeth being set on edge” (Ezekiel 18:31). In the words for “saith the Lord” we have the more solemn word which carries with it the announcement as of an oracle from God.

Verse 31. A new covenant] The Christian dispensation.

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.

31. The days come — Days of blessed promise — a period marked as the exodus itself.