Speaking about the people's future and the messianic age, Jeremiah uses the concept of a new covenant between God and His people. The covenant made at Sinai is, of course, not abolished; it remains in force, although...
Speaking about the people's future and the messianic age, Jeremiah uses the concept of a new covenant between God and His people. The covenant made at Sinai is, of course, not abolished; it remains in force, although the people had long violated the terms of that agreement, repeatedly transgressing the Torah given as its foundation. But now the subject is no longer a Torah carved in stone, but a Torah written in the heart.
This Torah written in the heart will become the foundation of the new messianic covenant. After the Babylonian captivity, these words of the prophet were understood anew, and the concept of the inner Torah arose in postexilic Judaism, followed later by that of the living Torah. The inner Torah was no longer an external legal or moral restraint upon a person, but an inner spiritual and moral imperative. Following it was connected not only, or even primarily, with self-restraint, but with ordering one's inner life and then one's outward life according to its norms. This was ascetic work in the proper sense of the word, when asceticism is understood not as self-mortification but as organizing one's inner world, and afterward one's outward life, around a spiritual axis—the inner Torah. Ideally, it alone was to determine a person's life. Such a person became a living Torah; there was no longer room for sin in his life, and the knowledge of God became his ordinary state, just as Jeremiah had said. Of course, for fallen humanity the living Torah remained an unattainable ideal.
It is not by chance that Jesus speaks of the Torah He came not to abolish but to bring to fullness. The first Christians saw in Christ the only earthly example of a living Torah. They understood becoming like Him as the path of the inner Torah, culminating in the Kingdom when the person following Christ's path becomes a living Torah himself, like his Teacher. Thus, with Christ's coming, the revelation once given to the prophet six centuries before His birth was disclosed. This is not surprising: the meaning of every genuine revelation is fully revealed only in the Kingdom for whose sake it was given.
31 The restoration of Israel published, Jer 31:1-14.
Rachel mourning is comforted, Jer 31:15-17.
Ephraim repenting is brought home, Jer 31:18-21.
Christ promised, Jer 31:22-26.
His care over the church, Jer 31:27-30.
His new covenant, Jer 31:31-34.
The stability and enlargement of the church, Jer 31:35-40.
31:23 The Lord of hosts - These prophecies of the restoration of the Jews, are ordinarily prefaced with these two attributes of God, the one of which asserts his power to do the thing promised; the other his goodness to his people.
31:25 For - The words are a promise, that God would give his people abundance of ease and plenty.
31:26 Upon this I awaked - Probably this revelation was made to Jeremiah, in a dream.
31:27 I will sow - That is, I will exceedingly multiply them, both with men and with cattle.
31:31 Behold - And not only with the Jews, but all those who should be ingrafted into that Olive. It is not called the new covenant, because it was as to the substance new, for it was made with Abraham, Gen 17:7,and with the Jews, Deu 26:17-18, but because it was revealed after a new manner, more fully and particularly, plainly and clearly.Nor was the ceremonial law any part of it, as it was to the Jews, a strict observance of that. It was likewise new in regard of the efficacy of the spirit attending it, in a much fuller and larger manner.
31:32 Not according - The covenant which God made with the Jews when they came out of the land of Egypt, was on God's part the law which he gave them, with the promises annexed; on their part (which made it a formal covenant) their promise of obedience to it.
31:33 With - That is, with those who are Jews inwardly.And write it - The prophet's design is here to express the difference betwixt the law and the gospel. The first shews duty, the latter brings the grace of regeneration, by which the heart is changed, and enabled for duty. All under the time of the law that came to salvation, were saved by this new covenant; but this was not evidently exhibited; neither was the regenerating grace of God so common under the time of the law, as it hath been under the gospel.
31:34 I will forgive - God makes the root of all this grace to be the free pardon, and the remission of their sins.
31:36 Those ordinances - The ordinances of nature, which are God's establishments for the working of natural causes in their order.
31:37 I will cast off - That is, I will never cast off all the seed of Israel.
31:38 The city - Shall be built round, as largely as ever.
31:39 The line - That is, it shall be built round about upon its old foundations.
31:40 The valley - A valley, so called from the multitude of Sennacherib's army slain there. Of the ashes - So called from the ashes of the sacrifices carried thither. Holy - All these places shall be parts of the holy city, and God's name shall be sanctified, and he shall be worshipped in them all. For ever - If we interpret the word for ever of a perpetuity, the church of God must here be understood, against which the gates of hell shall never prevail.