

6.74 Jeremiah -- the New Covenant
The idea of Covenant is terribly important to Jeremiah -- one of his chief indictments of his people is that they have broken the Lord’s covenant:
​
"Both the house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken the covenant I made with their forefathers" (Jer 11:10),
​
thereby bringing down on themselves the covenant curses (Jer 11:8). And yet the Lord remains faithful. Jeremiah prays,
​
"Remember your covenant with us and do not break it" (Jer 14:21).
The Lord assures him that He will no more forsake His covenants with the Levites and with David than He will His covenant with day and night (Jer 33:19-22).
More than this, though, He will make a new and "everlasting covenant" (Jer 32:40) with His people:
​
"The time is coming," declares the Lord,
"when I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah....
​
"This is the covenant I will make with the house of
Israel after that time," declares the Lord.
"I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people.
​
"No longer will a man teach his neighbor,
or a man 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" (Jer 31:31-34).
​
This is the best-known passage in Jeremiah, and it is one of the key Old Testament passages underlying the New Testament concept of a "new covenant" inaugurated by Jesus. The central provision of this new covenant is the new heart. Jeremiah has seen that
​
The human heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure (Jer 17:9),
​
beyond any hope of reform. But now the Lord says,
​
"I will give them a heart to know me" (Jer 24:7).
​
"I will give them singleness of heart and action" (Jer 32:39).
​
One sweeping implication will be a new era of individual responsibility. In the Law of Moses, obedience and sin each have generational consequences:
​
"I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments" (Ex 20:5-6).
​
But this will change, says Jeremiah. A day is coming when
​
"people will no longer say, 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.' Instead, everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes -- his own teeth will be set on edge" (Jer 31:29-30).
From the standpoing of this study on race, a major difference between Isaiah's and Jeremiah's declaration of the new covenant is that Jeremiah limits it to the houses of Israel and Judah (Jer 31:31). There is no mention of foreigners, "people who sat in darkness," eunuchs, etc. This makes Jeremiah somewhat similar to Joel, who foresaw a great endtime outpouring of the Holy Spirit (Joel 2:28-29), but does not specifically mention Gentiles.
This leads us to consider what Jeremiah does have to say about the surrounding nations.