Commentary on Jeremiah 31:31-34

Jeremiah 31 is an imaginative text that casts its gaze toward a hopeful future. Specifically, the chapter is concerned with what shape hope might take after the destruction of Jerusalem and the conquest of Judah. 

The four short verses we encounter in the lectionary reading offer a way to begin imagining hope: “The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah” (31:31). In highly evocative language, the prophet proclaims a future covenant that will be different from the covenant of the past. 

For the prophet’s audience, a promise of a positive future would likely have seemed hard to believe. The worst, it seemed, had already happened. Sacred institutions, including the Temple, had been destroyed. Many people had endured exile to Babylon. The political structures of the Davidic kingdom had collapsed. In short, the season for hope seemed to have passed. 

Viewed through the lens of covenantal failure, the crisis of conquest and exile necessitated new theological paradigms. Many people in Judah had believed that the Jerusalem Temple, God’s earthly home, would protect them from foreign conquest. In earlier sections of the book of Jeremiah, the prophet critiques this view, warning instead about the consequences of failing to live faithfully in accordance with the covenant (see for example, Jeremiah 7). Later, after the fall of Judah has happened, the prophet offers a surprising message to those in exile. He encourages the people to build homes and to plant, to get married and have children (Jeremiah 29). The people are to settle in Babylon. The consequences of covenantal failure, the prophet proclaimed, would not end quickly. 

The four verses considered here take on a very different tone from the first half of the book. These verses are a part of Jeremiah’s “Book of Consolation,” a group of several chapters that focus on future restoration after the period of exile. The language throughout is striking, offering a set of juxtapositions between anticipation of a positive future and the harsh reality that people are facing. Taking into full account the covenantal failures of the people and the consequences that come with them, the prophet does not idealize or minimize the people’s past failure to uphold the covenant. Nor does he ignore the suffering they currently experience. Hope is both imaginative and sober. 

In verse 32, we are told that the new covenant will be unlike the prior covenant. In content and scope, the covenant has not changed. Both are the result of divine initiative. The Lord describes the first covenant made between God and the people as “the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt” (verse 32). The language is tender. God is described as a shepherd who gently led the people. The covenant God made with the people at Sinai offered freedom from service to Egypt for service of God. 

Likewise, the new covenant will also be entirely by God’s initiative. In verse 33, we see that divine action takes center stage, with God as the one who makes the covenant, puts the laws within the people, writes the law on their hearts, and becomes their God. 

We might wonder, then: What distinguishes the first covenant from the new one about which the prophet speaks?

The prior covenant is described as “the covenant that they broke, though I [God] was their husband” (verse 32). Using a marital metaphor to describe the failed covenant, it reminds the people that the obligation between God and the people was meant to be characterized by love and fidelity. This makes the language of “new covenant” even more surprising. If the first covenant was such a colossal failure, why would God promise a new covenant?

The anticipated new covenant offers failsafe measures, ensuring its durability. The hope that this prophecy imagines is a covenant that will last. The text creatively describes the way that direct knowledge of God might make such covenantal fidelity possible. God will write upon their hearts, not on tablets. 

Thus, the distinguishing factor about this covenant is the manner of God’s self-revelation. It is not simply that the location of the law has changed from tablets to hearts. Rather, the covenant’s “newness” is in the way that the people come to know God. The law will be directly given so that the whole faith community will know God. There will no longer be a need for teaching one another about God because God will already be known, “from the least of them to the greatest” (verse 34). The antidote to human propensity for covenantal infidelity is knowledge of God. 

Jeremiah 31:31–34 is not a how-to manual. It does not offer advice on how to handle Sunday school curriculum, adult education opportunities, or other ways of teaching the faith. It does not offer a concrete set of solutions for how to better align the community with divine expectations. Rather, the text offers an imaginative way to think about how God’s gracious character can overcome human limitations. It provides a theological statement about the divine character, which is fundamentally relational. God mysteriously chooses to enter into mutual commitment with God’s people, despite the fact that the human participants are habitually forgetful and flawed. This is the content of hope for the people of God.