The Book of Jeremiah

Hebrew Study

Explanation

The chapter opens with the covenant refrain, "I... will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people." God recalls how Israel "found grace in the wilderness," and then declares the tenderest words: "I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee." His love is the reason for everything that follows. He will rebuild the "virgin of Israel" until she dances again with joy, plant vineyards, and set watchmen crying, "Arise ye, and let us go up to Zion." He will gather the scattered "from the coasts of the earth", and He will not leave out the weak: "the blind and the lame, the woman with child." He leads them gently, "by the rivers of waters in a straight way, wherein they shall not stumble," because "I am a father to Israel." The ground of it all is redemption: "the LORD hath redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him from the hand of him that was stronger than he." The result is overflowing joy, souls "as a watered garden," a people who "shall not sorrow any more at all," for God will "turn their mourning into joy." This is not merely a return from Babylon; it is a picture of the full salvation God's love accomplishes.

Gospel Focus

"I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee." Here is the deepest spring of the gospel: God loved His people before they loved Him, with a love that has no beginning and no end. "We love him, because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19). Our salvation does not start with our reaching for God but with His everlasting love reaching for us, and that love does not merely wait, it draws. Jesus said no one can come to Him unless the Father draws him (John 6:44), and He promised, "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me" (John 12:32). The drawing is by "lovingkindness," not force; God woos the heart. And the love is grounded in redemption, "the LORD hath redeemed... and ransomed him from the hand of him that was stronger than he." We too were held by one stronger than ourselves, sin and death, and could not free ourselves; but the LORD ransomed us, paying the price in the blood of Jesus, "who gave himself a ransom for all" (1 Timothy 2:6). The end of this love is pure joy: mourning turned to gladness, the soul "as a watered garden." If you have felt unloved or beyond reach, hear this: God's love for His own is everlasting, His drawing is tender, His ransom is paid, and His aim is your unfading joy.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

God gives a poignant picture: "A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted... because they were not." Rachel, the ancestral mother, personifies the nation weeping over children lost to exile and death. But God answers her tears: "Refrain thy voice from weeping... for thy work shall be rewarded... And there is hope in thine end", the children "shall come again." Then God turns to Ephraim, and we overhear genuine repentance: "Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised... turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the LORD my God." Ephraim grieves over his sin, "I smote upon my thigh: I was ashamed." And God's response is overwhelming tenderness: "Is Ephraim my dear son?... my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him." God calls the backslider to "turn again," and announces something astonishing, "the LORD hath created a new thing in the earth, A woman shall compass a man", a fresh, unprecedented work of God. He promises rest for the weary: "I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul." The prophet, given such sweet visions, says, "my sleep was sweet unto me."

Gospel Focus

This passage is woven into the gospel story. Matthew quotes "Rachel weeping for her children" (Matthew 2:18) at the slaughter of the infants in Bethlehem after Jesus' birth, showing that the deepest griefs of God's people are gathered up into the coming of Christ, where mourning finally meets its answer. Here we also see the true nature of repentance: "turn thou me, and I shall be turned." No one turns to God by his own strength; we cry for God to turn us, and He graciously does, "it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do" (Philippians 2:13). And we see the Father's heart toward the returning sinner, "my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy", the very heart Jesus painted in the father running to embrace the prodigal (Luke 15:20). Most wonderful is "the new thing... A woman shall compass a man." From the earliest centuries believers have seen here a shadow of the greatest new thing God ever did: the virgin conception, when Mary "compassed" within her the man-child who was God manifest in the flesh (Matthew 1:23; 1 Timothy 3:16). The everlasting love that draws sinners took flesh in a virgin's womb. God does not merely command us to turn; He turns us, has mercy on us, and has come to us Himself in Jesus Christ.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

God promises to reverse His work of judgment: "like as I have watched over them, to pluck up... so will I watch over them, to build, and to plant." He teaches personal responsibility, ending the excuse that children merely suffer for their fathers' sins: "every one shall die for his own iniquity." Then comes the summit of the whole book: "Behold, the days come... that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah." It is "not according to the covenant... which my covenant they brake." The old covenant, written on stone, could command but could not change the heart. The new covenant is different in kind. Its four great promises are these: first, an inward transformation, "I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts"; second, the covenant bond, "will be their God, and they shall be my people"; third, direct personal knowledge of God, "they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest"; and fourth, full and final forgiveness, "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." God then guarantees this covenant by His own power as Creator: only if the "ordinances" of sun, moon, and stars could vanish, or the heavens be measured, could He cast off His people. His faithfulness is as fixed as the cosmos. And He promises the very city, even its defiled valley of dead bodies, will be rebuilt "holy unto the LORD... for ever."

Gospel Focus

This is the promise the entire New Testament is built upon, and it is fulfilled in Jesus Christ. On the night He was betrayed, He lifted the cup and said, "This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you" (Luke 22:20). The new covenant of Jeremiah 31 is sealed in the blood of Jesus, and the book of Hebrews quotes this very passage twice to prove that in Christ the old covenant is fulfilled and surpassed (Hebrews 8:8-12; 10:16-17). See its four promises meet us in the gospel. First, God writes His law on the heart, this is the new birth, when the Spirit is poured within and obedience becomes desire, "written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God... in fleshy tables of the heart" (2 Corinthians 3:3). Second, we become God's own people and He our God. Third, we know Him personally, "they shall all know me," for eternal life is "that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ" (John 17:3), the one God revealed in the face of Jesus. Fourth, and gloriously, "I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more", sins not merely covered but blotted out of God's memory, "as far as the east is from the west" (Psalm 103:12). And notice how sure it is: as sure as the sunrise, as unmeasurable as the heavens. The one God who made the stars has bound Himself to save His people, and He has done it in Jesus Christ, whose blood established the new covenant. Have you entered it? It is received by faith in Him who shed His blood, and it brings a new heart, a known God, and sin remembered no more.