Behold, days come, saith Jehovah, that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah [with] the seed of man and the seed of beast.
Jeremiah spoke while enemies were tearing Jerusalem apart, yet here God promises to refill that same emptied land with people and livestock. Two questions follow: what does it mean for God to "sow" a nation, and who does He sow?
Jeremiah names two houses, Israel and Judah — one people split in two. The first in this run of promises covers them both.
The first of these promises pledges an end to their suffering and the sure establishment of both houses of the chosen nation.
The picture is farming, not exile. Dennett makes the point while explaining a similar promise in Zechariah.
Jehovah would sow His people among the nations. Some point out that the word "sow" is never used to mean scattering. So it must mean increase or blessing. The similar expression in Hosea, "I will sow her to Myself in the earth," with its context, bears this out.
That same Hosea phrase carries a name — Jezreel — and a purpose reaching past Israel's own borders.
There is an unbroken chain of blessings from the Lord Himself down to the blessings poured out in abundance on Israel here on earth. Israel is the seed of God — that is the force of the name "Jezreel". So He adds, "I will sow her to Myself in the earth." For Israel will become the instrument of blessing to the earth, like life from among the dead.
Verse 27 runs straight into verse 28. There God says He will watch to build and plant, just as He once watched to pluck up and destroy. Commentators use that pairing to test who the promise is about.
Now who are they over whom the Lord has watched, to pluck up, to break down, to afflict, and to destroy? Are they not the same people He here promises to watch over, to build, and to plant? And can there be any doubt that both statements speak of the literal Israel?
Darby presses the same test. He also points to the place-names at the close of the chapter.
It is a little unreasonable to apply all the judgments to Israel, and then apply to the church the blessings that concern those same people. And if this passage does speak of the church, what is the meaning of "from the tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate," "the hill Gareb," and so on? Notice also the last words of the chapter: "It shall not be plucked up or overthrown anymore forever."
God names herds and flocks alongside people because the land Jeremiah saw had lost both. Kelly comments on a later promise that pictures the same reversal, and draws out what it proves.
Shepherds will tend their flocks in peace in the very place war had ruined most. God says the days are coming when He will do the good thing He promised to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah. So the promise takes in both houses. That is conclusive proof that no past return, and no spell of quiet under Gentile rule, meets the terms of Scripture. The prophecy still awaits its fulfilment.
The sowing leads on to the new covenant, promised a few verses later. Gaebelein says who that covenant is for, and what it rests on.
The great prediction in these verses is the one about the new covenant. God does not make this covenant with Gentiles, nor even with the church, though people often say so. He will make it with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. … The old covenant is the law-covenant, which the Lord did not make with Gentiles, but with Israel alone. The new covenant is of grace. The ground of this new covenant is the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus Christ, His blood. This prophecy is still unfulfilled, for Israel does not enjoy this new covenant now. Meanwhile Gentiles, who by nature are outsiders to Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, believe in Christ and possess the blessings of this new covenant to the full.
- Uprooted. God plucked up and destroyed one people. He promises to build and plant that same people. The judgments and the blessings belong to one nation, not two.
- Sown. Commentators note that "sow" never means scatter. It points to increase and blessing. Hosea's name Jezreel — "the seed of God" — carries the same picture.
- Refilled. God names man and beast together because the land had lost both. Waste ground becomes pasture where flocks lie down.
- Reaching. Israel, sown by God, becomes the instrument of blessing to the earth, like life from among the dead.
- Permanent. The harvest of this sowing is the new covenant of grace, and it rests on the blood of Christ. What God plants then "shall not be plucked up or overthrown anymore forever."
And it shall come to pass, as I have watched over them, to pluck up, and to break down, and to overthrow, and to destroy, and to afflict; so will I watch over them to build, and to plant, saith Jehovah.
God turns from tearing down to building, and He uses the same word for both: He watched. So who are these people? And if God kept His threats so exactly, will He keep His promises just as exactly?
We expect God's watching to mean protection. Here it first describes the disaster He brought. Daniel used the same words and said God was right to do it.
"Therefore," says Daniel, "the LORD has kept ready the calamity and has brought it upon us." The Lord had said to Jeremiah, "I am watching over them for disaster and not for good." Again, the same prophet tells us that the Lord had "watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring harm." How solemn! We can better understand the Lord watching over His people to protect them. But here we find He watches over them for evil, and Daniel justifies the Lord in doing so. "The LORD our God is righteous in all the works that He has done, and we have not obeyed His voice."
The promise arrives with no transition. That pattern runs through the prophets, and it shows where the blessing comes from.
The prophecies about that blessed day for Israel, and for this earth, when God will bring them back to their own land, are very many. There are far too many to list here. One very striking thing about them is that these promises of future blessing often come in suddenly, just after God speaks of the chastisement He had to bring on them for their sins. Often God introduces them with the words "I WILL do such and such." This shows us that the blessing of the people rests on pure grace and sovereign mercy. It is also a moving proof of God's willingness to forgive — yes, His delight to bless — wherever there is real repentance and self-judgment.
The whole force of the verse hangs on one word: them. The people God uprooted are the people He will plant. Writers press this against any reading that gives the judgments to Israel and the blessings to someone else.
Now who are the people the Lord has watched over, to pluck up, to break down, to afflict and to destroy? Are they not the same people He here promises to watch over, to build and to plant? And can anyone doubt that both statements speak of the literal Israel? Then, further: with whose fathers did the Lord make a covenant when He took them by the hand to bring them out of Egypt? With the same people He here promises to make a new covenant. The Lord will make this new covenant with "the house of Israel and the house of Judah." It will be "not like the covenant," He says, "that I made with their fathers." How can any but the literal nation of Israel be meant here?
The chapter itself supplies the test. It does not stop at building. It names the rebuilt city's boundaries and promises that no one will ever tear it down again.
In Jeremiah 31 the Lord says, "As I have watched over them to pluck up and break down, to overthrow, destroy and bring harm, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, declares the LORD." Has God watched over the church to pluck it up? After that verse the prophet adds: "then I will cast off all the offspring of Israel for all that they have done, declares the LORD. Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when the city shall be rebuilt for the LORD from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate" — and "it shall not be uprooted or overthrown anymore forever." Jeremiah was speaking to the Jews. He told them that God would not cast them off in that future day, that God would rebuild the city, and that those He had so completely uprooted would never be uprooted again. Is this the church?
Both halves of the verse rest on the same watching God. So the judgment He already carried out proves the promise He has still to keep.
No prophecy about the sufferings has failed, and none ever will. God will never let His word fall to the ground. "You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities." Will He prove less faithful about their promised future blessings? Impossible. "For thus says the LORD: Just as I have brought all this great disaster upon this people, so I will bring upon them all the good that I promise them."
- Watched — for harm. God watched over the disaster as surely as over the rescue. Daniel agreed that the Lord was righteous in it.
- Watched — for good. The blessing breaks in right after the chastisement. It comes with God's "I will," and rests on grace and sovereign mercy alone.
- Watched — over them. The people God uprooted are the people He will plant. He promises the new covenant to the same house of Israel and Judah whose fathers came out of Egypt.
- Watched — for keeps. The chapter closes with a city rebuilt and never uprooted again. That is why writers say these words do not belong to the church.
- Watched — to the letter. Every word of the judgment came true. So every word of the promised good will come true: as He brought the disaster, He will bring the good.
In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge
God promises Israel a day when a well-worn saying will drop out of use. The sour grapes proverb was their way of saying that one generation was paying for another's sins. Was that complaint ever fair, and what does God do about it?
This verse belongs to the first of three closing declarations in Jeremiah 31.
This word of our prophet closes with a threefold declaration from Jehovah about the rich blessing of all His people: first, verses 27-30; second, verses 31-37; third, verses 38-40.
The same saying appears in Ezekiel, where God answers it. One commentator reads that answer as God giving the people just what their complaint asked for.
This deserves careful thought. At the captivity God acts on the murmuring of His people. He ends any further governmental dealings on the ground of Exodus 34:6-7. From now on He would take them on their own terms. They complained of the hardship of suffering for the failures of their fathers, so He would now give them what they themselves deserved. Clearly a sinner must suffer for sin. And if he challenges the justice of paying the penalty for a parent's evil, he cannot deny that he deserves punishment for his own.
The proverb leaned on a real statement of God's, but the people dropped the phrase that limited it.
He has assured us Himself that He "visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation." But then come the words that guard it from being misread: "of those who hate Me." And elsewhere the Lord strongly condemns the proverb that Israel had taken up from just such a misreading: "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge." (Ezekiel 18.) He not only says it, He swears it: they will have no reason to use such a proverb.
The same writer points out that the commandment also cuts the other way.
But the commandment says something quite different from that complaint. It gives those who love God and keep His commandments a definite assurance of mercy. So they could not come under a contradictory law of inheriting their father's sins.
A person can inherit real damage from those before him and still answer for what he does with it.
We do inherit both a sinful nature and its consequences, but the nature is not in question here. The popular proverb is speaking about the penalty. We all have a fallen nature — though remember that man is not like an animal, to be bound by his nature or excused by it. A man may argue as he likes about what he has inherited from Adam. Yet about every sin he has committed, he knows in his own soul that he is responsible, and why. He cannot put his sins to Adam's account. They are his own.
The proverb is easy to transfer to any group that has inherited a spoiled situation — including Christians looking at the state of the church.
The question is very simple and of the greatest seriousness. Is the church responsible for the state it is in? Or can it say, like the Jews in Jeremiah 31:29: "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge"? An unbeliever, speaking of himself, may say: If I have inherited the bad condition of Adam, it is no fault of mine; I suffer from it, but I am not responsible for it. God does not judge like that in His government of the world and of His people. He treats man as responsible. He deals with His people as responsible for the state they are in. They have been in the evil themselves; they share in it.
That raises a question: what kind of dying is in view?
This replaces the Jewish principle of government, that the "children should die for their fathers' sins," with the declaration that "each should die for his own." We may know, and do know, from other teachings of the Holy Scriptures, the terrible effect of a man dying in his sins. But that is not directly the subject here.
The second of those three declarations names what replaces the old arrangement.
The second speaks of the new covenant that Jehovah will make with them — not according to law but grace — and of its permanence and theirs.
- Complaint. The proverb was a murmur against God — the claim that one generation's teeth ached for grapes another generation ate.
- Misquotation. The saying used only half a sentence. God visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children "of those who hate Me," and He promises mercy to those who love Him.
- Answer. God takes the complainers at their word. He deals with each on his own account. A man who disputes paying for a parent's evil cannot dispute paying for his own.
- Scope. This is God's government of His people on earth; commentators treat eternal destiny as a subject taught elsewhere.
- Cure. The saying stops not by argument but by a new covenant of grace, which comes next in the chapter.
for every one shall die for his own iniquity; every man that eateth the sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
Behold, days come, saith Jehovah, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah
God speaks here of days still ahead, and of a covenant that will replace the one Israel already had. Three questions follow. Why was a new covenant needed? Who is it for? And what does it mean for readers who belong to neither house named in the verse?
One writer traces the long silence that followed Jeremiah's words:
Century after century passed, and no prophet or messenger said one more word about the new covenant. Had God forgotten it? Had Jeremiah raised false hopes? At last, in an upstairs room in Jerusalem, the Lord mentioned it to His twelve disciples alone, in a way that showed heaven had not forgotten it. He spoke of it as something to expect, something that would happen. But He did not say when. "The days are coming," Jeremiah had said. He spoke of the new covenant as certain, but the timing stayed deliberately open… It was not made before the cross, for the blood it will rest on was not shed until then. It has not been made since the cross, for God has not been dealing directly with Israel and Judah.
The first covenant rested on different ground, and it did not last long:
You could hardly say that the old covenant of law rested on promises at all, though some promises went with it. It rested instead on a bargain. Israel agreed to obey in everything, and God guaranteed certain blessings if they did. Israel broke that bargain almost as soon as they made it, by making the golden calf. The new covenant rests on promises, God's own promises, better than anything the law offered. That marks it off sharply from the old… God's "I will" is what makes it what it is. Everything depends on what God is going to do.
So what stops Israel from breaking the second covenant as they broke the first?
Israel had not kept the first covenant, so God set them aside. But Israel could not break the new covenant, because it did not rest on what they would do, but on what God would do. God would not set out His laws on tablets of stone, as at Sinai. He would put them in their minds and write them on their hearts too… and having remembered their sins at the cross, He would remember them no more.
The verse names two houses that have long been apart:
Notice the added thought here… it is made with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. The ten tribes of Israel have wandered off. God knows where they are, if we do not, and the time is coming when the whole twelve tribes will be reunited. The staff will become one, God's royal staff in His hand again, when Israel and Judah will be one nation in the land under the terms of the new covenant.
Does a new covenant dishonour Moses and the law he brought? One writer answers from Moses' own words:
It will be no dishonour to the law of Moses that God will establish a new covenant under the Messiah; in fact Moses himself predicted it. He foretold that the Lord God would raise up a prophet like himself — like him, yet greater than him (Deut. 18:15, 18). This prophet would be no greater if he did not bring in a new order of things, that is, the new covenant. Moses brought in the old covenant. Christ will bring in the new covenant.
So where does a Christian reader stand? One writer draws a careful line:
I do not say that we Christians have the new covenant itself. But we do have the blood of the new covenant. We have the foundation the new covenant rests on. The new covenant itself assumes the land of Israel blessed and the house of Israel delivered, but neither of those has become true yet. The new covenant also assumes certain spiritual blessings: the law of God written in the heart, and our sins forgiven. We have received these spiritual parts of the new covenant now, along with other blessings that belong to Christianity alone: the presence of the Holy Spirit, and union with Christ in heaven, which the Jews will not have.
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- Cause. The old covenant was a bargain, and Israel broke it at the golden calf. A new one was needed because man's side had already failed.
- Gift. The mark of the new covenant is God's "I will" — laws written on hearts, not cut in stone, so it cannot be broken as the first was.
- Basis. Its foundation is blood already shed; Christ, the prophet greater than Moses, is the one who brings it in.
- Reach. It is named for the house of Israel and the house of Judah — the twelve tribes reunited in the land, still future.
- Result. Believers today do not hold the covenant itself. They do hold the blood it rests on, and with it forgiveness and the law written within.
not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day of my taking them by the hand, to lead them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they broke, although I was a husband unto them, saith Jehovah.
Jeremiah 31:32 defines the new covenant by what it is not — unlike the covenant Israel broke after God led them out of Egypt. Two questions follow: why did the first covenant fail, and why does God call Himself a husband to people who betrayed Him?
The two covenants run on opposite principles.
Even for the earth and Israel in the millennial day, the Messiah will be present. The new covenant will be made with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah in all its literal force. It will bring in such a blessed change that the prophet rightly contrasts it with the condition under Moses. It will be Jehovah undertaking, and therefore sure blessing, instead of a test to prove man's weakness and ungodliness.
The picture behind the phrase is not a legal signing but a parent steadying a small child's first steps.
And what shall we say of the tender, affectionate care expressed in these touching words: "When Israel was a child, I loved him... and it was I who taught Ephraim to walk — He took them upon His arms" (Hosea 11:1, 3). A mother holds her child in her arms as the object of her protecting love and care. She holds its arms when teaching it to walk. God dealt with His earthly people in the same way... But how unsteady and uncertain were their steps, stumbling all the way.
The covenant at Mount Sinai came as a demand written on stone. Failure came quickly.
The covenant made with the people at Sinai was one of demand, presented to them on two stony tablets. If they met these obligations, they were to live. But they could not meet God's demand. So what was appointed to give life became death to them... They could not bear the word when God spoke it in their ears out of the devouring fire. As soon as Moses turned his back, they turned away from God, made a golden calf, and worshipped the idol.
Grace came first; the terms of Sinai came after.
Up to that time, since their redemption from the land of Egypt, they had been under grace. God had borne them on eagles' wings, and brought them to Himself... They accepted the condition offered to them, with death as the penalty for breaking it. From then on they stood on a new footing and relationship with God.
The old covenant had two sides. The new one has only one.
There were two sides to the old covenant — God's and the people's. The people broke their side of the covenant. This compelled God to break His — or rather, to find fault with it, as a way of relating to Himself that could do nothing for the people. There will be only one side to the new. In the old God said, "I will, if you will"; but in the new it is all "I WILL" on the part of God... He will put His law, not upon two stony tablets, but upon the hearts and minds of the people.
Hebrews quotes this verse with different wording at the end. Commentators take both wordings as true sides of one situation.
In Hebrews the quotation follows the Greek Old Testament, where the words are "I showed no concern for them." That is, they had lost divine regard because of their failure. It shows how the Spirit of God uses an Old Testament scripture and adds the truth according to His own wisdom, as He sees it is needed. Looking at the people, how true it was that God could not regard them as under the first covenant! And yet, under that covenant, God truly was a husband to Israel!
The nation that lost everything under the first covenant is the nation promised the second.
Israel only had the first covenant; Israel by grace will have the second. Israel lost their privileges and land under the old covenant. Under the new covenant, Israel will be restored and blessed more than ever, and for ever, in their land.
Even so, the Christian is not shut out today.
No doubt this is true of the Christian meanwhile, for the blood of the new covenant is already shed and ours by faith. But God will apply it to Israel and Judah as such, through His mercy.
- Hand. God's dealing began in tenderness — He took a helpless people by the hand and taught them to walk out of Egypt.
- Demand. At Sinai that grace gave way to terms on stone. Obedience was the condition, and what was meant to give life brought death.
- Broken. The people broke their side, and one broken side ruins a covenant that has two.
- Husband. God still calls Himself their husband. Hebrews states the other true side: under that covenant He could not regard them.
- Undertaking. The new covenant drops the "if you will" and keeps only "I will." It is God's own undertaking, promised to Israel and Judah, with blood already shed and enjoyed now by faith.