Jeremiah31chapter 31

Jeremiah 31:1-6

the God of all the families of Israel: The Book of Consolation widens to all the families of Israel, north and south together, and grounds the restoration in the oldest fact the book knows: I have loved thee with an everlasting love, therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee. Grace in the wilderness reaches back to the exodus generation, love before any performance, which is why the rebuilding verbs are certainties rather than offers, again I will build thee, and thou shalt be built. The watchmen of Ephraim crying let us go up to Zion is the schism of Jeroboam healed in one sentence, as the bench notes: the northern hills themselves calling pilgrims to the feast they were built to prevent.

Jeremiah 31:7-14

The return is described by who is in the company: the blind and the lame, the woman with child and her that travaileth, the travelers no army would take and this procession is built around, they shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them. For I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn restores the disinherited north to the eldest place, and the nations are summoned as witnesses, he that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock. The watered garden and the mourning turned into joy give the restoration its texture, wheat, wine, oil, flock and herd, ordinary abundance as covenant proof, as Calvin reads the passage.

Jeremiah 31:15-17

A voice was heard in Ramah, Rachel weeping for her children, refused to be comforted, because they were not: the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, buried on the road the exiles walked, mourning the generations marched past her tomb. Matthew quotes the verse at 2:18 over the children of Bethlehem, and the exposition shows what Matthew's readers were meant to see: in Jeremiah the weeping is answered in the next breath, refrain thy voice from weeping... they shall come again from the land of the enemy, and there is hope in thine end. The citation carries the hope with the grief, as the older writers insist: Rachel's children come home in both testaments.

Jeremiah 31:18-22

Ephraim's repentance is overheard rather than demanded: thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke, turn thou me, and I shall be turned, repentance itself asked for as a gift, the verse the older writers took as the grammar of grace. The Father's answer breaks open at verse 20, is Ephraim my dear son?... my bowels are troubled for him, I will surely have mercy upon him, as close as the Old Testament comes to the running father of Luke 15, which the bench names as its echo. The new thing created in the earth at 31:22, a woman shall compass a man, is a famous crux: the readings are named with holders, the older writers from Jerome onward hearing the virgin conception, others a proverb of reversal, weakness protecting strength; positions stated, no verdict.

Jeremiah 31:23-30

Judah's restoration is heard in recovered blessings, the Lord bless thee, O habitation of justice, spoken again in rebuilt cities, with husbandmen and shepherds dwelling together and every weary soul replenished. Upon this I awaked, and beheld; and my sleep was sweet unto me (31:26) is the prophet's one comment, and the commentators pause with him: the man of chapter 20 given one sweet sleep inside forty years of weeping. The sour-grape proverb is repealed (31:29-30), every one shall die for his own iniquity, individual standing before God stated as the new order, the same repeal Ezekiel 18 argues at length, and the watching of 1:12 returns converted: as I watched to pluck up, so will I watch to build and to plant.

Jeremiah 31:31-34

I will make a new covenant: Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: the only place the Old Testament uses the phrase, and Hebrews 8:8-12 quotes the whole passage, the longest Old Testament quotation in the New, drawing at 8:13 the conclusion from the covenant's own word. The terms are inward, personal, and final: the law put in their inward parts and written in hearts, they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest, and I will remember their sin no more, forgiveness as the covenant's foundation rather than its maintenance. The Lord took its cup into his own hands, this cup is the new testament in my blood (Luke 22:20), which is the New Testament's own claim that the days foretold here began that night; the exposition states it as the claim the texts make.

Jeremiah 31:35-37

The covenant is countersigned by the cosmos: if the ordinances of sun, moon and stars depart from before me, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever, and if heaven above can be measured, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel. The guarantee is attached to the named people in the text itself, immediately after the new covenant's terms, and the exposition states it at full strength: as long as the sun keeps its course, Israel remains a nation before God. The bench across its eras carries the verse as the standing answer to every reading that erases the people, and the site's own ruling stands with the text here; where writers have read otherwise, the difference is a difference, stated without heat.

Jeremiah 31:38-40

The chapter ends with a surveyor's walk: the city built to the Lord from the tower of Hananeel to the gate of the corner, the measuring line over Gareb and about to Goath, place names exact enough to plot. The climax is the ground chosen for holiness: the whole valley of the dead bodies, and of the ashes, Hinnom by every reckoning of the bench, the very valley whose name became Gehenna, shall be holy unto the Lord. The chapter that began with everlasting love ends with the city's cursed ground consecrated, and it shall not be plucked up, nor thrown down any more for ever.