NOTES for Jr 3:14-17

For many centuries the ark of the covenant played an enormous role in Israelite doctrine and worship. It was the material testimony to the covenant made between God and Israel—a covenant under which God assumed responsibility for the people's destiny, while the people promised to fulfill God's law given through Moses. The ark confirmed the saving work of God, who brought His people out of Egyptian slavery, and the righteousness of His law. The ark was sacred!

Then Jeremiah prophesies that the ark will lose its significance, that it will even be lost, and that it will no longer be remembered. This will mean not a rupture in the relationship between Israel and God but, on the contrary, its restoration and enrichment. It is revealed to the prophet that a time will come when the symbol of salvation will no longer be the exodus from Egypt but the Messiah-Christ's way of the cross, and when God's law will be borne not by tablets of stone but by human hearts.