31:1–3 The opening reference to “At that time” (v. 1) ties Jeremiah 31 closely to what precedes. At the conclusion of chapter 30 Yahweh had warned that the exile to Babylon was inevitable. More important than suffering the punishment itself, Judah needed to understand that this fate had become necessary due to its persistent stubbornness toward Yahweh. Once Judah is chastened to accept this reality “in the latter days” (30:24), the lessons of exile are complete—the stage is set for a dramatic reversal in Judah’s fortunes.

In the first of two announcements, Yahweh declares that he will reconcile his unfaithful people to himself: “I will be the God of all the clans of Israel, and they shall be my people” (31:1). In the oral cultures around Israel, similar vows were typically used to confirm the new familial relationships created by weddings (e.g., “I will be your husband, and you will be my wife”) or adoptions (e.g., “I will be your son, and you will be my father”).98 But uniquely for Israel at Sinai, Yahweh had used a covenant formula (“I will be your God, and you will be my people”) to mark an entire people as his own (Ex. 6:7; cf. Jer. 7:23; 11:4). Exile from the land would temporarily suspend this relationship, for Yahweh warned through the prophet Hosea that apostasy would mean that “You are not my people, and I am not your God” (Hos. 1:9). But on the day Yahweh restores his people to the land it will again be the covenant formula that undoes their estrangement from him: “In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ it shall be said to them, ‘Children of the living God’” (Hos. 1:10).

The passage also expands upon the prophecy of Hosea in a second declaration. Yahweh compares Israel’s exile to come with her meandering between exodus and conquest: “The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness” (Jer. 31:2; cf. Hos. 2:14). Although referring to different exiles of the two Israelite kingdoms, these passages in Hosea and Jeremiah both echo Deuteronomy’s striking recollection of the wilderness as a place of both honeymoon and deprivation. Just as wandering in the wilderness was Yahweh’s classroom to teach Israel the lesson of simple dependence upon him (Deut. 8:1–5), the remnant will find exile to be “grace in the wilderness” (Jer. 31:2) when “the Lord appeared to [Israel] from far away” (v. 3). Then turning to speak directly with his people, the divine Groom affirms, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you” (v. 3). Hosea had similarly spoken of how Yahweh’s “love” and “faithfulness” would overcome the infidelity his bride had already shown during their honeymoon together in the wilderness (Hos. 2:19; 3:1; cf. 2:3).

31:4–6 The word-pictures for Israel’s restoration shift fluidly in these verses between a beloved bride and a fertile land (both being feminine “you” in Hb.). Yahweh promises to “build” virgin Israel so that she will “be built” (Jer. 31:4; cf. 1:10; 18:7–10) as both people and land. Her people will celebrate with music and dancing (31:4c–d), much like Miriam and the Israelite women did after Israel’s deliverance from Egypt (cf. Ex. 15:20). Her land will bloom when the “planters shall plant and . . . enjoy the fruit” (Jer. 31:5), an unmistakable second allusion to Yahweh’s stated determination in the opening chapter “to build and to plant” (1:10). The culmination of restoration will occur when watchmen summon Israelites from every corner of the land to worship Yahweh at Mount Zion (31:6). This description of people’s arrival from Ephraim in the north to Zion in the south indicates that restoration after exile will include both kingdoms of Israel. In fact, other passages in Jeremiah indicate that all nations who repent of their sins will be numbered among the people of Yahweh (e.g., 3:17–18).

31:7–9 As his people arrive in Zion (cf. v. 6), Yahweh turns to address the nations (cf. v. 10) apparently watching these remarkable events. They are to celebrate with Israel as the “chief of the nations” and implore Yahweh to continue his mighty act of restoring them from exile (v. 7). Yahweh responds that he is indeed bringing back his children of all kinds from all over the world (v. 8). Surprisingly, though, the passage goes on to describe a disconsolate people who return to the land “with weeping” and “with pleas for mercy” (v. 9) rather than the joyful throng mentioned earlier (cf. vv. 4–5).

Are the returnees of Israel happy or sad? The reason for this discrepancy lies in the challenge of translating Hebrew verbs into their English equivalents. Baldly speaking, the Hebrew verbs in the passage describe Yahweh’s restoration of Israel as a present rather than future event (i.e., “Behold, I am bringing them . . . and I am gathering them”; v. 8).99 In turn, these miracles in the future are rooted in a past declaration (i.e., “I have been a father to Israel”; v. 9e). It is understandable that the ESV renders this perfective Hebrew verb as “I am a father to Israel,” opting for clarity by pairing the likely time referents for the Hebrew verbs with the appropriate English tenses to highlight the predictive nature of prophecy.

These grammatical observations lead to two theological possibilities for why the returnees are sorrowful (which are not mutually exclusive). First, the Hebrew present-tense verbs may be referring to the nearer future of when the exiles begin their journey home. It will not be until they arrive back in the land, further in the future, that their sorrow will turn to joy (cf. Ps. 126:1–3; Jer. 31:4–5). Second, the nonlinear organization of Jeremiah 31 seems to join past, present, and future horizons of time to emphasize Yahweh’s plan to redeem his reluctant people even before they were judged, with this promise of deliverance in the future already a foregone conclusion in the present. The theme of sorrow thus could operate on two levels—both the initial sadness of those who are returning as well as the sadness of those who are about to go into exile. However, the Hebrew verbs might cause misunderstandings for English readers of this passage if they were rendered too literalistically.

31:10–14 The yet-future restoration of Israel becomes the occasion for summoning the nations as witnesses to Yahweh’s mighty acts. An unknown speaker, possibly Jeremiah, exhorts the nations to hear Yahweh’s word and announces, “He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd keeps his flock” (v. 10). For the nations to announce this confession is also Yahweh’s reminder that he saved Israel out of the nations’ clutches as a force stronger than they (v. 11). The liberated exiles of Israel will then come to Zion (v. 12a; cf. v. 6) to rejoice over the land’s abundance (v. 12b–f; cf. v. 5) with song and dancing (v. 13; cf. v. 4). Compared to the earlier description of Israel’s restoration (cf. vv. 4–6), this section adds the special note that the priests will experience abundance alongside the people (v. 14). Jeremiah has previously confronted the priests of Israel who, in concert with wicked prophets, used their power to exploit the people (e.g., 23:9–40).

31:15–20 The passage returns from the distant future to a nearer horizon to depict the aftermath of exile. The trauma of deportation has brought deep sorrow to Judah, here personified as Rachel the matriarch, weeping for her children (v. 15) in Ramah of Benjamin, the territory allocated to her son’s tribe. Before this verse is used to portray the aftermath of Herod’s violence against the infant boys of Bethlehem (cf. Matt. 2:18), it first refers to the sorrowful gathering of many Judeans in Ramah before they are deported to Babylon (cf. Jer. 40:1).

Even before exile occurs Yahweh exhorts his people not to mourn (31:16), for they will certainly return one day to the land (v. 17). The passage then shifts its focus from Rachel to Ephraim as Yahweh quotes her grandson lamenting the pains of exile and estrangement from God (vv. 18–19). The sudden mention of Ephraim, a son of Joseph and one of the main tribes in the already-defunct northern kingdom of Israel, can hardly be accidental in a prophetic book that usually speaks to the southern kingdom. “Ephraim” was Hosea’s ironic title for the northern kingdom when confronting its apostasy with fertility religion (e.g., Hos. 4:17; 9:16), as the name means “double-fruitfulness” (cf. Gen. 41:52; cf. Gen. 1:28; 8:17; 9:1).

But, following Yahweh’s punishment through exile, the formerly arrogant Ephraim is now ready to confess,

    You have disciplined me, and I was disciplined,

    like an untrained calf;

    bring me back that I may be restored,

    for you are the Lord my God. (Jer. 31:18)

This is a total reversal of the humiliating picture by which Yahweh once described his people as

    a trained calf

    that loved to thresh,

    and I spared her fair neck;

    but I will put Ephraim to the yoke;

    Judah must plow;

    Jacob must harrow for himself. (Hos. 10:11)

The clueless bovine of Hosea 10 has become a repentant bovine in Jeremiah 31.

Yahweh responds to this change of heart by further elevating the lowly beast back to the status of being his own child. In a monologue to match Ephraim’s (cf. Jer. 31:18–19), Yahweh exclaims,

    Is Ephraim my dear son?

    Is he my darling child?

    For as often as I speak against him,

    I do remember him still.

    Therefore my heart yearns for him;

    I will surely have mercy on him,

declares the Lord. (v. 20)

The emotions of Ephraim’s God are those not of one standing aloof with arms crossed, waiting coolly for his child to come around, but of an intense warmth in which Yahweh’s “bowels are kindled” (v. 20e AT). Kazoh Kitamori observes that in God’s shift from wrath back to love, “Jeremiah must have seen in God the same condition of the heart which the prophets and psalmists themselves experienced. What kind of condition? The pain! The pain of God!”100 Indeed, the longsuffering God of Israel has answered his people’s turn from apostasy to repentance with an agonizing turn of his own (cf. 18:1–10)—an important theological topic that the Response section will explore further.

31:21–26 This section records a vision of Jeremiah while sleeping. Following the vision itself (vv. 21–25), a rested Jeremiah awakens (v. 26). The content of the vision is the strange role to be played by “virgin Israel” (a singular personification of all the women) as the people begin to return from exile. Because the men of Israel are incapacitated by fear (cf. 30:6), she must take the initiative to chart the way home (31:21) even as her own commitment to return wavers (v. 22a–b). Israel is in such dire straits, however, that Yahweh has created a “new thing” of women leading the men so that they can return home safely (v. 22).101

Yahweh will reward the faithfulness of Israel’s women who persevere despite their own doubts and the unreliable men who should have led them. As their efforts result in Israel’s return to the land, a restored people will pronounce a blessing upon Jerusalem/Zion as Yahweh’s “habitation of righteousness” and “holy hill” (v. 23). This city will again be the place at which Yahweh reigns and allows his people to dwell safely in their land (v. 24) as a satisfied people (v. 25). In the final analysis, Israel’s journey home from exile will hardly have been a straight line. Yahweh’s assurance that it will nonetheless occur turns what could have been Jeremiah’s nightmare into a pleasant dream from which to awaken (v. 26).

31:27–30 The end of exile will bring several breakthroughs for Yahweh’s people. Besides the physical act of returning to the land, Yahweh promises that he will “sow the [household] of Israel and the [household] of Judah with the seed of man and the seed of beast” (v. 27). The Hebrew term bayit can denote both a literal physical “house” as well as a broader figurative “household.” The latter sense is evident as Jeremiah recalls Hosea’s inclusion of both humans and animals as part of Yahweh’s reconstituted covenant between himself, Israel, and all nature’s creatures (cf. Hos. 2:18–23).

Hosea’s creational language of “sowing” then shifts to Jeremiah’s own creational language from the opening visions of chapter 1. Previously Yahweh had vowed to “watch” (cf. 1:11–12) over his apostate people to “pluck up and break down” and to “overthrow, destroy, and bring harm” (31:28; cf. 1:10). After he has restored their captivity, he will instead “watch over them to build and to plant” (31:28; cf. 1:10).

This first breakthrough of fertility for people and land will lead to a second breakthrough in the people’s understanding of divine justice. Using similar creational language, the people of Judah had begun to recite a proverb by which they blamed their ancestors for the exile: “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge” (31:29; cf. Ezek. 18:2). But as Judah finally takes responsibility for its sins (cf. Jer. 31:18–19), it will also come to recognize that Yahweh has always treated people as they deserved.

Contrary to a common interpretation dating back over a century,102 Yahweh’s declarations “Everyone shall die for his own iniquity” and “Each man who eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be set on edge” (v. 30) do not teach that divine retribution changes after the exile from being corporate to being individual in nature.103 Instead, the theological contrast at hand lies in Israel’s mistaken blame toward her ancestors and her newfound willingness to accept punishment for her own sins. Yahweh’s assertion “They shall no longer say . . .” (v. 29) expresses the end of misguided wishful thinking among his people. On this note, Ezekiel 18 quotes the same lie and responds that, even if corporate retribution had somehow become individual retribution after the exile, the generation that finally went to Babylon was even more guilty of sin than its ancestors. Those who went into exile were fully deserving according to the actual rationale of Jeremiah 31 and even more deserving according to the hypothetical rationale of Ezekiel 18!

31:31–34 Even before exile runs its course Yahweh has already planned a lasting cure for the spiritual malady that made exile necessary in the first place. He resolves to make a “new covenant” with the entirety of his people (Jer. 31:31) that is “not like the covenant that [he] made with their fathers on the day when [he] took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, [his] covenant that they broke” (v. 32). This clearly refers to the covenant Yahweh made with his people at Sinai and renewed at Moab. But, as noted above in the Overview of Jeremiah 30–33, it is mistaken to understand the contrast between the “old covenant” and the “new covenant” as a theological dichotomy between law and grace. The contrast lies instead between Yahweh’s grace in establishing a covenant relationship “when [he] took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt” and Israel’s ingratitude when “they broke” that relationship through persistent disobedience. The old covenant was thus breakable but not bad itself. Though the apostle Paul is often enlisted in Christian theology to criticize the old covenant, he asserts in more than one place that the OT law is fundamentally good (e.g., Rom. 7:12, 16; 1 Tim. 1:8).

The innovation of the “new covenant” comes in its addressing of the issue of Israel’s apostasy. At an unspecified time in the future Yahweh will make a new covenant in which “[he] will put [his] law within them, and [he] will write it on their hearts” (Jer. 31:33). The word rendered “law” is torah, a term that refers broadly to “instruction” in this context, not merely the legal stipulations of the Pentateuch.104 The fact that torah will continue to be a part of the “new covenant” indicates that obedience to God’s “instruction” will remain a crucial part of relationship with him. The discontinuity with the “old covenant” lies in God’s word being indelibly written “on their hearts” to a broader extent than his rebellious people were able to do on their own power. Other OT passages already speak of the need for obedience to God that comes from the heart, especially the injunction of Proverbs to “write them [i.e., the wise parent’s instruction from God] on the tablet of your heart” (Prov. 3:3; 7:3; cf. Deut. 10:16).

Since the old covenant could be broken by disobedience, the new covenant will impart a greater ability to obey (as Jer. 31:34 will shortly explain). The result will be the kind of covenant relationship that Yahweh has always sought with his people: “I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (v. 33; cf. Gen. 17:7; Ex. 6:7; Heb. 8:10; Rev. 21:3). Here and elsewhere in the Bible the notion of covenant in the OT is more of a familial relationship than a legal contract (although the latter connotation of the word has come to dominate in the English language).

The primacy of relationship is why the former need for the people to exhort one another (“Know the Lord”) will be superseded by Yahweh’s fresh promise that “they shall all know [him], from the least of them to the greatest” (Jer. 31:34). The possibility of knowing Yahweh was always the goal of the old covenant (e.g., Deut. 6:4–5; 7:9; Hos. 2:20), but the fact that said covenant was breakable meant his sinful people could easily become estranged from him. Precisely here lies the newness of the new covenant, when Yahweh will forgive the sins of his people (Jer. 31:34), which keep them from knowing him (cf. Isa. 59:2; Jer. 9:24; 22:16; Hos. 4:1). That is, lasting forgiveness from God is not the mark of the new covenant but its enabler, so that all people may know Yahweh as the old covenant intended but sin prevented it from doing. The important theological relationships between the old covenant, the new covenant, and the work of Jesus Christ will be discussed in the Response section.

31:35–40 These verses assert the impossibility of thwarting the new covenant. In an echo of Yahweh’s promise that the earth will never again be flooded (cf. Gen. 8:21–22), the Creator declares that the order of creation will testify to his faithful ways. He is the one who has fixed the heavenly lights and ordered the seas below them (Jer. 31:35). The steadfastness of the creational witness underlies Yahweh’s counterfactual logic that follows: were it somehow possible for the order of creation to fall apart, this would mean the end of Israel as a nation (v. 36). And were the heavens small enough to be measured and the earth’s foundations shallow enough to be explored, Yahweh would stop being the God of his people Israel (v. 37).

Nonetheless, creation itself shows that these conditions could never be met. Therefore, Yahweh’s faithfulness will continue to be as certain as it has always been. Surprising as it may be to use a hypothetical to communicate theology, such biblically inspired imagination continues today in the third verse of “The Love of God,” Frederick Lehman’s classic hymn first published in 1917:

    Could we with ink the ocean fill

    And were the skies of parchment made

    Were ev’ry stalk on earth a quill

    And ev’ry man a scribe by trade

    To write the love of God above

    Would drain the ocean dry

    Nor could a scroll contain the whole

    Though stretched from sky to sky.

The relationship of Yahweh with Israel can never end, just like the love of God is far too vast to record in heaven or on a scroll.

However, which version of Israel (e.g., preexilic, postexilic, or modern) does Jeremiah 31 have in view? It will be necessary to explore prophecy’s relationship to fulfillment more fully in the Response section, but this passage’s mention of several locations that existed only in ancient Jerusalem suggests that the prophecy of the city’s restoration was intended more for Jeremiah’s original readers than for modern history. The description of the restored city’s scope as inclusive of the Tower of Hananel and Corner Gate in the east (v. 38; cf. Neh. 3:1; 12:39; Zech. 14:10), a certain “hill Gareb” and “Goah” in locations modern archaeologists have been unable to identify (Jer. 31:39), the Kidron Valley to the south (v. 40), and the Horse Gate to the east (v. 40) refers to sites evidently familiar to the prophet’s audience but unable to be exactly mapped in Jerusalem since the exile.

For these reasons it is questionable to correlate Yahweh’s statements about Israel’s never ceasing to be a nation (v. 36) and the permanent restoration of Jerusalem (v. 40) to modern Israel and modern Jerusalem in a one-to-one manner. Since ancient Israel and modern Israel are not the same, this discontinuity also means that Israelites, citizens of the ancient kingdom, are not to be conflated with Israelis, citizens of a modern state who tend not to be religious Jews at all.105 Thus the balance of biblical evidence indicates that the primary fulfillment of Jeremiah 31 lies in Jesus Christ’s inauguration of the “new covenant” through his life and ministry.