Commentary on Jeremiah 31:31-34

If you are somewhat taken aback by the announcement of something “new” in the book of Jeremiah, you are probably not alone. For chapters on end, Jeremiah announces coming judgment and destruction upon the people as a result of their refusal to turn from idolatry, political corruption, and social injustice.¹ At several junctures, God even tells Jeremiah not to pray for the people, or simply says that prayers from neither will be heard (7:16; 11:11; 14:11–12; 15:1). How could anything new come from this?

Nevertheless, we find ourselves here within four chapters (Jeremiah 30–33) in the middle of the book that exhibit a marked shift toward future hope.² Further, the first two chapters of this section are a literary unit known as the Book of Consolation.³ Despite Israel’s refusal to repent, and the resulting punishment of exile, God does in fact have something new in store for the remnant—a new covenant.

Covenant is a major theological motif in the book of Jeremiah—highlighted largely by Israel’s breaking of the covenant God had made with them. However, covenant also receives definition by God’s faithfulness to it despite Israel’s lack thereof. The Book of Consolation (and the larger unit of Jeremiah 30–33) demonstrates that God has not abandoned Israel, nor God’s covenant with them. If that were the case, judgment would have been the last word and these chapters would not be here.

Instead, we come to discover that God is not done with this people or this covenant. The phrase “The days are surely coming” not only directs attention toward the future, but gives a certainty to what is about to be announced.⁴ That this will be a “new” covenant by no means indicates that the previous one is being tossed—the baby is not going out with the bathwater here. We moderns would have a tendency to think that is the case, since increasingly, to get something new in our society means the disposal of the “old” thing. This is not the case with the Hebrew notion of “newness” as expressed here.

To be sure, this covenant “will not be like the covenant that [God] made with their ancestors” (verse 32). The difference lies in the fact not that the old one is being completely dumped, but that God is doing some retooling, so to speak. As verse 32 continues, we find that one of the things about the previous covenant that will not characterize the new one is the people’s breaking of it. They had been unable to abide by the statutes and ordinances God had given on stone and other media.

So how will this new covenant be less prone to breakage by the people? Will God encourage them to just try harder this time? No. The newness, the difference is nothing short of a miraculous divine act. God will take the law from stone or papyrus or other material and write it on the people’s hearts, thus putting it within them (verse 33). In so doing, God seeks to remedy the failure of the previous covenant—God took the people by the hand and was their husband, but they broke that covenant (verse 32). Now, with the law internalized via the people’s hearts, the Lord will be their God and they will be God’s people.

In other words, the covenant relationship will be sustainable, not only by God as it always had been, but by the people as well. God’s word will be such a part of the fiber of the people that there will no longer be a need for anyone to say to another, “Know the LORD”—because everyone will already know the Lord! (verse 34).

Commensurate with the characteristics of covenant, knowing the Lord means more than possessing intellectual knowledge or data. Typically, knowing something, or especially someone, in Hebrew parlance indicates intimate knowledge—the kind of knowledge shared between companions in a covenant relationship. So Israel is not being called to memorize information. That has been shown not to work. No, the covenant relationship must be deeper than that. They must know the Lord so deep down in themselves that their lives flow out of that knowing. God seeks to enable that with the writing of the law on the covenant partners’ hearts.

To further facilitate this relationship, God declares, “I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more” (verse 34). A nuance will again be helpful. Forgiveness is not the same as pretending that something never happened. Forgiveness is striving to sustain a relationship despite what happened. This is the kind of covenant faithfulness and determination we see in God, and that God wants to see in us.

Further, not remembering does not mean forgetting in the same way as erasing data from a hard drive. Not remembering something in this case means not letting that thing dominate and determine the direction and life of the relationship—not letting it dictate the reality of the present and future. This is not a cheap grace that God is offering, but one that requires determination and work.

So, have these days come? Has the new covenant been fully realized? It would not seem so, because there is still very much the need to say to one another, “Know the Lord,” and because God’s law does not appear to be fully internalized in human hearts. This does not mean the promise was or is empty. Jeremiah did not give a timeline.⁵ We can still affirm with Jeremiah that these days are coming. Just because we are not there yet does not mean God is not at work moving us in that direction.

In 2014, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America launched a ministry campaign titled “Always Being Made New.” It seems that this is a good spirit in which to read these verses of Jeremiah. We are being made new in all the mighty acts of God across the salvation history of the Old Testament. We have been and are still being made new by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are being made new thanks to the work of Martin Luther and numerous other reformers. We are being made new when we are baptized and when we partake of the Eucharist. We are indeed always being made new. And the day will come when all newness will be made complete.

Notes

1. See, for instance, the Temple Sermon of chapter 7.
2. Patrick D. Miller, “The Book of Jeremiah: Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary 6 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 797.
3. Jeremiah is not without words of consolation elsewhere (for example, 29:11), but never to the sustained degree found in these chapters.
4. The certainty comes not from “surely” in the New Revised Standard Version, for there is no corresponding word in the Hebrew. It does come, however, from the fact that God is the one making the proclamation (“says the LORD”).
5. Instead, chapter 30 ends with the prophet acknowledging that we would not see or understand all that God is doing right away, but that someday we would.