Chapter Thirty-One

1–26. The restoration of Israel in its own land after captivity. 27–37. The New Covenant. 38–40. The restoration of Jerusalem.

Jer 31:1-26. Here the promises “to all the tribes of Israel” continue, but what comes to the forefront is specifically the Israelite, ten-tribe kingdom. The Lord will gather again in the land of Israel those who were taken from it, and they with repentant tears and fervent prayers will turn again to their God. A time of rejoicing will begin in the land of Israel, and now Rachel, the ancestress of the tribe of Joseph, must be consoled by the return of her children from captivity. Israel, for its part, must not delay its turning to God.

Jeremiah 31:2. “Thus says the Lord: The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness; I come to give rest to Israel. “The people who survived the sword”—these are the captives taken by the Assyrian king in the Israelite kingdom and led into Assyria. They survived the slaughter that took place when the cities of the Israelite kingdom were taken by the Assyrians. “Found”—a prophetic past tense used in place of the future, and it is better to translate: will find. “In the wilderness”—that is, in the land of captivity, which presented for the Israelites as many dangers as a wilderness. “I come”—more correctly from the Hebrew: I will reach or Let us come! To give rest means to bring them out of captivity and lead them into the land of Israel.

Jeremiah 31:3. “From far away the Lord appeared to me, saying: I have loved you with an eternal love, and therefore I have drawn you with unfailing kindness. “From far away” (that is, from Jerusalem) the Lord appeared to me—these are the words of the captive people of Israel. “With an eternal love”—these are the words of God, which explain why the Lord again becomes the helper of Israel.

Jeremiah 31:4. “I will build you up again, and you will be rebuilt, Virgin Israel. Again you will take up your tambourines and go out to dance with the merry-makers. “I will build you up”—I will give not only external prosperity but also internal strength upon which this prosperity will be firmly established. “To take up your tambourines”—literally, to put on tambourines. Small tambourines were usually fastened on the fingers by Hebrew women.

Jeremiah 31:5. “Again you will plant vineyards on the hills of Samaria; the farmers will plant them and enjoy their fruit. The hills of Samaria—these are the hills of Ephraim in general, named here after the capital of the Israelite kingdom. “The farmers will plant them and enjoy their fruit.” According to the law of Moses, the fruit of a newly planted vineyard in the first three years was considered unclean and was not eaten. In the fourth year it was brought as an offering to God, and only in the fifth year did it go to common use (Lev 19:23-25). Since in earlier times enemies often devastated the land of Israel, it frequently happened that the one who planted a vineyard could not wait until the fifth year—the vines were destroyed by enemies before that time came. When the Lord returns the Israelites to their land, such sorrowful occurrences will no longer take place.

Jeremiah 31:6. “For a day is coming when the watchmen on the hills of Ephraim will cry out: ‘Come, let us go up to Zion, to the Lord our God.’ The watchmen on the high points of the hills of Ephraim, who in earlier times may have been observing to see that subjects of the Israelite kingdom did not go to Jerusalem for pilgrimage, now themselves will call their countrymen to Zion, from where they will be given a signal about the approach of some festival.

Jeremiah 31:7. “For thus says the Lord: Sing with joy for Jacob; shout for the chief of nations. Proclaim, praise and say: ‘O Lord, save your people, the remnant of Israel.’ Chief of nations—this is the people of Israel, having regained their primacy among all nations (cf. Jer 2:3). “Save”—more correctly, as in the Slavonic: “You have saved, O Lord.”

Jeremiah 31:8. “Look, I am bringing them from the north and gathering them from the ends of the earth. Among them are the blind and the lame, pregnant women and those in labor; a great throng will return. The majority of the captive Hebrews from both kingdoms lived in the north (cf. Jer 3:18).

Jeremiah 31:9. “They will come weeping as they seek mercy. I will guide them beside streams of water on a level path where they will not stumble, for I am Israel’s father, and Ephraim is my firstborn son. The Israelites will come (they came—prophetic past in place of future) from captivity with joyful tears. Ephraim—that is, the Israelite kingdom—is called here God’s firstborn because Joseph, the father of Ephraim, was granted one of the rights of firstborn—a double share of the inheritance (cf. 1 Chr 5:2).

Jeremiah 31:14. “I will satisfy the priests with abundance, and my people will be filled with the good things I provide,” declares the Lord. The priests will have good portions from the thank offerings (Lev 7:31-34). The fat mentioned here is not the fat obtained from the internal organs of an animal. Such fat or fatty internal parts were to be burned on the altar.

Jeremiah 31:15. “Thus says the Lord: A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children; she refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more. Ramah—a city in the tribe of Benjamin, about two hours’ journey north of Jerusalem. This place is elevated; from it one can see a far distance. Rachel, the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, is also the ancestress of the entire ten-tribe kingdom, which was called Ephraim after her grandson. She appears weeping in Ramah—a high place from which she observes the desolated kingdom of her sons, chiefly the land of Joseph—although she was buried far from here, near Bethlehem (Gen 35:19).

Jeremiah 31:16. “Thus says the Lord: Restrain your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for your work will be rewarded, declares the Lord, and they will return from the land of the enemy. “A reward for your labor”—that is, a reward for the sufferings you endured for the sake of your children. This reward is the return of the ten tribes to Palestine.

Jeremiah 31:18. “I have heard Ephraim moaning: ‘You disciplined me like an unruly calf, and I have been disciplined. Restore me, and I will return, for you are the Lord my God. “Restore me”—The people of Israel recognize that they do not have sufficient strength of their own to turn to the true path.

Jeremiah 31:19. “After I turned around, I repented, and after I was taught, I beat myself on the thigh. I was ashamed, yes, even humiliated, because I bore the disgrace of my youth.’ “Beating myself on the thigh”—a sign of the deepest repentance. “The disgrace of my youth”—that is, the shame which I deserved by my former behavior.

Jeremiah 31:21. “Set up road signs for yourself; put up guideposts. Turn your attention to the highway, the road by which you came. Return, Virgin Israel, return to these cities of yours. Israel must undoubtedly return from captivity, and therefore must already determine the road by which it will go home. It is not stated who should set up the guiding stones.

Jeremiah 31:22. “How long will you wander, unfaithful Daughter Israel? The Lord will create a new thing on earth—the woman will return to her husband. “Unfaithful Daughter”—cf. Jer 3:6. This is the name for the kingdom of the ten tribes, which fell away from the Davidic dynasty and also from true religion. “On the earth”—that is, in the kingdom of Israel, to which the Israelites are to return. “A woman will return to her husband”—or more precisely: a woman will protect a man (or a strong person). Here the prophet is speaking of the new theocratic community, weak in appearance as a woman is weak, but having within itself sufficient strength to protect and preserve the land of Israel, which is represented under the image of a strong man. This is the new and unexpected thing that the Lord will create. The new, spiritual power of the people will be the foundation of the strength of the state.

Jeremiah 31:23. “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: When I bring them back from captivity, the people in the land of Judah and in its cities will again use these words: ‘The Lord bless you, you righteous dwelling, you sacred mountain!’ Here the discourse begins about the return of the captive Jews. The entire Jewish family will be like the holy mountain Zion—everywhere on it God will be close to people.

Jeremiah 31:24. “And Judah will be inhabited, and all its cities will be rebuilt together—the farmers and those who move about with their flocks. The cities and townspeople will be happy; the farmers and shepherds will be happy.

Jeremiah 31:26. “At this I awoke and looked around. My sleep had been pleasant to me. The conclusion of the discourse. It is hardly likely that Jeremiah received the preceding revelation in a dream: he was certainly not a dreamer (Jer 23:25 and following). Probably he means to say that the picture which he saw before him in the revelation was like a sweet dream. The distant future that unfolded before him affected his soul like a strengthening sleep. Jer 31:27-40. The Lord God, who until now has sent terrible calamities upon the Jews in their own land, will now constantly care for the increase of the population of Judea and for the well-being of its inhabitants. The curse for the sins of ancestors, which has weighed upon the Jews until now, will be lifted from them. No one will suffer for others’ sins. But complete and final blessedness for the Jews will come when the Lord concludes with them the New Covenant. The Divine Law will then be inscribed not on stone tablets but will be indelibly established in the hearts of people. The most important distinguishing feature of this future Covenant is that the people will then be granted complete forgiveness of sins. All this will come about as surely as the order in the movement of the heavenly bodies is sure. With topographical precision the prophet further describes the reconstruction of Jerusalem, noting also that in the new Jerusalem there will no longer be any unclean, defiled place.

Jeremiah 31:27. “Look, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will plant the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the offspring of people and of animals. God is depicted here as a sower, scattering seeds of life far and wide with a generous hand.

Jeremiah 31:29. “In those days the people will no longer say, ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ Sour, unripe grapes set the teeth on edge. The meaning of the saying “The parents ate...”—is that punishment for sin does not always fall on the sinners themselves but on their descendants, who nevertheless do not suffer involuntarily but because the Lord sees in them the same sins as in their ancestors (cf. Exod 20:5). There is not only individual sin but corporate sin—the sin of a family, clan, generation, people, and state. Such sin develops gradually, like any seed developing gradually to full maturity, and only then does punishment fall upon it. So the contemporaries of Jeremiah had to experience all the terrible consequences of the mistaken policy of their ancestors, which they themselves carried to completion.

Jeremiah 31:30. “But everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes—their own teeth will be set on edge. In the distant future, sin will not represent something corporate. If sins are committed, they will be only as something exceptional and will not bring responsibility upon distant future generations. On the whole, Israel will be a holy community, where individual transgressions, offenses of individual members, will not bring substantial and irreparable harm.

Jeremiah 31:31. “The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. The prophet conceives of the New Covenant as one that will coincide with the restoration of the house of Judah and Israel, which is possible only in the distant future. “I will make.” The essential moment in the biblical idea of the Covenant is that it emphasizes not a purely contractual relationship between God and man, but points to the initiative coming from God, and therefore the Covenant is an establishment of God.

Jeremiah 31:32. “It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt — that covenant of Mine they broke, though I remained in union with them,” declares the Lord. The Lord made a covenant with the Hebrews at Sinai, but already on the day they departed from Egypt the Passover was observed, which, as is known, could be observed only by those who were in covenant with God, and therefore the Hebrews were called to covenant from the day they departed from the land of Egypt. “I was a husband to them”—it would be more in accord with the context of the speech to translate as in the LXX: “I rejected them,” or more precisely: “I was weary of them.” Indeed, if the Lord still “was a husband to them,” then it means the first Covenant did not at all need to be replaced with a new one, and yet the New Covenant is spoken of further as something necessary for the people of Israel.

Jeremiah 31:33. “But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. “After those days”—that is, after that sorrowful future which the people rejected by the Lord must experience. The first distinguishing feature of the New Covenant from the Old is that in place of the letter of the law standing before a person’s eyes, which excites in him a desire to resist the will of God, the content of this law will enter into the very inner being of a person, and good works will be performed by the person from his own inclination. This is what the words mean: “I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts.” The second distinguishing feature of the New Covenant from the Old is that then there will truly exist a union between God and Israel, which until now was known only by name, in words—“I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

Jeremiah 31:34. “No longer will each one teach his neighbor or each one teach his brother, saying ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. The third distinguishing feature of the New Covenant is that then there will be no need for constant reminders from priests and prophets about the need to know the Lord and His holy will, as was required in Old Testament times. Then everyone will know the Lord and will strive to fulfill His will (cf. Isa 54:13; John 6:45; 1 John 2:20). The fourth distinguishing feature of the New Covenant is that then the Lord will not remember the sins and iniquities of the people, whereas in the Old Covenant the constant sacrifices offered for sins clearly showed that the Lord remembered the sins of the people. But of course, this forgetfulness of sins does not mean that the Divine Judge will only close his eyes to the sins and transgressions of the people. Undoubtedly, the prophet here has in mind the redemption that will be accomplished for all people by Christ the Savior, by virtue of which all sins can find forgiveness (1 John 2:1). This last distinguishing feature of the New Covenant is the most essential, because nothing crushes a person like the consciousness of his estrangement from God caused by his sins.

Jeremiah 31:35. “This is what the Lord says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—the Lord of hosts is his name. Jeremiah 31:36. “If these decrees vanish from before me,” declares the Lord, “then the descendants of Israel too will cease to exist as a nation before me forever. Jeremiah 31:37. “This is what the Lord says: If the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth below be searched out, then I will reject all the descendants of Israel because of all they have done,” declares the Lord. This New Covenant will be eternal and unchangeable, like the laws of nature established by God. God will not reject Israel from Himself—this is as unthinkable as it is unthinkable to measure the heavens and search out the foundations of the earth. “As a nation before me”—that is, my chosen people. Regarding the immutability of God’s promises concerning Israel, one can read in detail in the pamphlet by N. P. Rozanov “The Future of the Jewish People in the Light of Revelation,” Moscow, 1901, pp. 1–45. Jer 31:38-40. Jerusalem, this central point of the life of Judaism, will be restored again to its former appearance and size (Zech 14:10). Those places on the southern and eastern edges of Jerusalem, which until now were considered unclean and served as a place for throwing all kinds of refuse, will again be sanctified. People will even forget about the abominations that once were committed in these places. There will be no need to fear that the anger of the Lord will again burn against the city and that again its walls and towers will be given over to destruction.

Jeremiah 31:38. “Look, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when the city will be rebuilt for the Lord from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate. “Look, the days are coming.” Some interpreters (Dachsel, Die Propheten and others) refer this prophecy about the restoration of Jerusalem and the Jewish state to the times which we are experiencing—that is, the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, when the Jews as a people are supposed to enter the Church of Christ and establish themselves again in Palestine. Such opinions, which their authors attempt to base on chronological data from the Apocalypse (for example, on Rev 11:2), are refuted by reality itself, and undoubtedly the renewal of the Covenant with Israel is a matter of a very distant future from us. “The Tower of Hananel” (in Hebrew, Hananla) stood on the northeastern corner of the city wall (Zech 14:10; Nehem 3:1), and the Corner Gate was on the northwest of the city (2 Sam 14:13; 2 Chr 26:9). First, then, the prophet denotes the northern line of the city.

Jeremiah 31:39. “The measuring line will stretch from there straight to the Hill of Gareb and then turn to Goah. The Hill of Gareb, as is evident from the next verse, was on the western side of Jerusalem, and thus the prophet here denotes the western line of the city, while Goah, which stood at the junction of the valleys of Hinnom and Kidron, is the southern line.

Jeremiah 31:40. “And the whole valley of the dead bodies and of the ashes, and all the fields as far as the Brook Kidron, on the east toward the corner of the Horse Gate, will be sacred to the Lord. It will never be uprooted or demolished again. “The valley of the dead bodies and ashes”—this is the valley of Hinnom, south of the city, part of which from the days of King Josiah was considered unclean (2 Sam 23:10); corpses found on the roads were brought here, and ashes from the sacrifices were deposited here. The Horse Gate was on the southeast corner of the temple courtyard; it denotes here the eastern boundary of Jerusalem. Special Remarks. The evangelist Matthew says that what Jeremiah said about the weeping of Rachel (verse 15) was ultimately fulfilled when Hebrew women in Bethlehem wept for their children, slain by the command of Herod (Matt 2:17-18). Indeed, as Rachel, the ancestress of Joseph and Ephraim, wept at the deportation into Assyrian captivity of her descendants, where all were threatened with death, so, it can be said, she accompanied with her weeping the death of innocent Bethlehem infants in the days of Herod. The women of Bethlehem wept, but the evangelist, amidst their cries, hears also the weeping of Rachel buried near Bethlehem. The prophecy concerning the New Covenant (verses 31–34) is cited in his letter to the Hebrews by the Apostle Paul to show that the prophet Jeremiah already testified that the Old Covenant had indeed become obsolete and was subject to abolition (Heb 8:13). Evidently, the Apostle, by the New Covenant that God was to make with Israel according to Jeremiah, understood the evangelical Covenant, which will, in time, in the distant future, be accepted by the entire Jewish people (cf. Rom 11:25).