Jeremiah 31

Today’s Passage: Jeremiah 31

We come now to the highest ground in the whole book of Jeremiah, the crown of what the old teachers called the Book of Consolation. For chapter upon chapter the weeping prophet has spoken hard words about ruin and exile, and every one of them was true. But here the LORD turns His face full toward His broken people and speaks nothing but comfort. He tells them that His love for them never ran out, that He will build them again and lead them home like a shepherd gathering a scattered flock, that He hears a mother weeping over her lost children and answers her with hope, that He still holds a wayward son as precious. And then, rising above all of it, He makes a promise so great that the whole New Testament will one day rest upon it: a new covenant, written not on stone but on the living heart, in which every one of His people will know Him personally and all their sins will be forgiven and remembered no more. Read this chapter slowly, for you are standing on holy ground.

As you read, hold this: God’s love for His people is everlasting, and His new covenant writes His law on the heart, gives each one a personal knowledge of Him, and forgives sin fully and forever.

Jeremiah 31:1–6 (BSB)

¹ “At that time,” declares the LORD, “I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they will be My people.” ² This is what the LORD says: “The people who survived the sword found favor in the wilderness when Israel went to find rest.” ³ The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have drawn you with loving devotion. ⁴ Again I will build you, and you will be rebuilt, O Virgin Israel. Again you will take up your tambourines and go out in joyful dancing. ⁵ Again you will plant vineyards on the hills of Samaria; the farmers will plant and enjoy the fruit. ⁶ For there will be a day when watchmen will call out on the hills of Ephraim, ‘Arise, let us go up to Zion, to the LORD our God!’”

Hear how the chapter opens, with the oldest and dearest promise in all of Scripture: I will be their God, and they will be My people. Everything else in this chapter is only the unfolding of that one bond. And then comes the sentence I would have you carry with you as long as you live. The LORD reaches back and reminds His people that from the very beginning He loved them, and He tells them the reason none of the ruin could undo that love: I have loved you with an everlasting love (אַהֲבַת עוֹלָם) ahavat olam, pronounced ah-hah-VAHT oh-LAHM. Strong's H160, everlasting love. The first word here, ahavah, is the plain, warm Hebrew word for love, the same love a husband bears his wife or a father his child, not a cold decision but a real affection of the heart. And beside it stands olam, one of the great words of the Old Testament, meaning the distant past and the endless future all at once, time reaching back beyond memory and forward beyond sight. Put the two together and you have a love that has always been and will always be. This is not a love that flares up and cools, that must be earned each morning and can be lost by nightfall. It is the settled, ancient, unending love of God for His own, the love that held on through the whole long exile and would not let go. When you wonder whether God could still love a people who had wandered so far, this is His answer, and it is His answer to every wandering soul that turns back to Him: I have loved you with an everlasting love. There is the ground beneath their homecoming. He did not draw them to Himself because they were lovely or deserving, and so their unworthiness cannot drive them away. His love has no beginning that could be forgotten and no end that could arrive. Because that love is everlasting, He says, I will build you again, and the harps will come down off the willows, and there will be dancing and vineyards once more, and one day a watchman on the hills will cry the words every exile longs to hear: Arise, let us go up to Zion. The rebuilding flows out of the loving. First He loves; then He restores.

Jeremiah 31:7–14 (BSB)

⁷ For this is what the LORD says: “Sing with joy for Jacob; shout for the foremost of the nations! Make your praises heard, and say, ‘O LORD, save Your people, the remnant of Israel!’ ⁸ Behold, I will bring them from the land of the north and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, including the blind and the lame, expectant mothers and women in labor. They will return as a great assembly! ⁹ They will come with weeping, and by their supplication I will lead them; I will make them walk beside streams of waters, on a level path where they will not stumble. For I am Israel’s Father, and Ephraim is My firstborn.” ¹⁰ Hear, O nations, the word of the LORD, and proclaim it in distant coastlands: “The One who scattered Israel will gather them and keep them as a shepherd keeps his flock. ¹¹ For the LORD has ransomed Jacob and redeemed him from the hand that had overpowered him. ¹² They will come and shout for joy on the heights of Zion; they will be radiant over the bounty of the LORD—the grain, new wine, and oil, and the young of the flocks and herds. Their life will be like a well-watered garden, and never again will they languish. ¹³ Then the maidens will rejoice with dancing, young men and old as well. I will turn their mourning into joy, and give them comfort and joy for their sorrow. ¹⁴ I will fill the souls of the priests abundantly, and will fill My people with My goodness,” declares the LORD.

Now the promise swells into a song, and it is worth pausing to praise the God who is described in it. See how tenderly He gathers His people home. He does not wait for the strong to make their own way back; He brings the blind and the lame, the mothers heavy with child and the women in the pains of labor, the very ones the world would leave behind. Not one is too weak for Him. He leads them beside quiet streams on a level road where they will not so much as stumble, and He calls Himself their Father and Ephraim His firstborn. Then He gives us one of the loveliest names for Himself in all the prophets: the One who scattered them is the very One who now gathers them and keeps them as a shepherd keeps his flock. The hand that disciplined is the hand that heals. And He says He has ransomed and redeemed them, buying them back from a power too strong for them to break on their own. So their mourning is turned into dancing, their sorrow into joy, their long famine into a life like a well-watered garden. Here is the God who does not merely release His people but delights to satisfy them, filling their souls with His own goodness until they are radiant. Sing with joy for Jacob, He says, and He gives us every reason to.

Jeremiah 31:15–17 (BSB)

¹⁵ This is what the LORD says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.” ¹⁶ This is what the LORD says: “Keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for the reward for your work will come, declares the LORD. Then your children will return from the land of the enemy. ¹⁷ So there is hope for your future, declares the LORD, and your children will return to their own land.

In the middle of all this joy the LORD does something we might not expect: He stops to hear a mother cry. He pictures Rachel, the long-dead mother of Israel, rising from her grave near Ramah to weep over the children of her people carried off into exile, and He does not scold her grief or hurry past it. He listens to it. He lets her sorrow be real. And then, into that weeping, He speaks the gentlest of comforts: keep your voice from weeping, for your work will be rewarded, and your children will come home from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future. Notice that God does not answer grief with a lecture but with a promise, and the promise is homecoming. This is the God who does not despise a broken heart. Long centuries later, when another slaughter of little ones filled Bethlehem with weeping, Matthew would reach for this very verse, for he knew that the God who once turned Rachel’s tears toward hope had come at last in His Son to make that hope sure. Where God’s people weep, God keeps their tears, and He is not finished with their story.

Jeremiah 31:18–20 (BSB)

¹⁸ I have surely heard Ephraim’s moaning: ‘You disciplined me severely, like an untrained calf. Restore me, that I may return, for You are the LORD my God. ¹⁹ After I returned, I repented; and after I was instructed, I struck my thigh in grief. I was ashamed and humiliated because I bore the disgrace of my youth.’ ²⁰ Is not Ephraim a precious son to Me, a delightful child? Though I often speak against him, I still remember him. Therefore My heart yearns for him; I have great compassion for him,” declares the LORD.

Here is one of the most touching exchanges in all the prophets, and it shows us exactly how repentance and mercy meet. First we hear the son come to himself. Ephraim, the wayward northern tribes, groans out a true and honest prayer: You disciplined me, and it was severe, but it was like the training of an untrained calf, and now, Lord, restore me and I will return, for You are my God. He owns his shame; he does not excuse the disgrace of his youth. And then, before the confession has even finished echoing, listen to how the Father answers. He does not fold His arms and wait to be convinced. His heart breaks open: Is not Ephraim a precious son to Me, a delightful child? Even when I have had to speak against him, I have never once stopped remembering him, and now My heart yearns for him. That word yearns is the sound of a father’s insides aching over a child. This is the very heart of God toward every returning sinner. He is not reluctant, not cold, not slow to forgive. Before the prodigal has finished his speech, the Father is already running down the road. When you turn back to God in honest repentance, this is the welcome you will find.

Jeremiah 31:21–26 (BSB)

²¹ “Set up the road markers, put up the signposts. Keep the highway in mind, the road you have traveled. Return, O Virgin Israel, return to these cities of yours. ²² How long will you wander, O faithless daughter? For the LORD has created a new thing in the land—a woman will shelter a man.” ²³ This is what the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel, says: “When I restore them from captivity, they will once again speak this word in the land of Judah and in its cities: ‘May the LORD bless you, O righteous dwelling place, O holy mountain.’ ²⁴ And Judah and all its cities will dwell together in the land, the farmers and those who move with the flocks, ²⁵ for I will refresh the weary soul and replenish all who are weak.” ²⁶ At this I awoke and looked around. My sleep had been most pleasant to me.

Having promised to bring His people home, the LORD now tenderly urges them to make ready for the journey. Set up the road markers, He says, remember the very road you were carried away on, and come back down it. Return, O Virgin Israel, return to your own cities. He calls her, even in her wandering, by the name of one still cherished. And He hints at a wonder to come, a new thing He will create in the land, spoken in a phrase the old teachers puzzled over with reverence, a sign that God is about to do something unheard of among His people. He promises that the land once emptied will again ring with blessing, that farmer and shepherd will dwell together in peace, and He gives another of those quiet self-descriptions we should treasure: I will refresh the weary soul and replenish all who are weak. That is the LORD’s own delight, to pour strength into the drained and the faint. And then comes a startling little line, for Jeremiah tells us that at this point he woke, and his sleep had been sweet to him. The prophet who spent his life weeping was given, for once, a dream of pure comfort, and he woke wanting to hold onto it. So may we, when we read these promises.

Jeremiah 31:27–30 (BSB)

²⁷ “The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and of beast. ²⁸ Just as I watched over them to uproot and tear down, to demolish, destroy, and bring disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant,” declares the LORD. ²⁹ “In those days, it will no longer be said: ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the teeth of the children are set on edge.’ ³⁰ Instead, each will die for his own iniquity. If anyone eats the sour grapes, his own teeth will be set on edge.

Now the LORD begins to say, again and again, the days are coming, and each time He says it He is opening a window onto a better future. The same watchful care that once oversaw the tearing down will now oversee the building and the planting, for God is as attentive in mercy as He was in judgment. And He sweeps away an old, bitter proverb the exiles had been muttering, the complaint that the children were suffering only for the sins of their fathers, that they were trapped by a fate not their own. No, says the LORD, in the days I am bringing, each person will stand before Me for his own life. There is a great mercy hidden in that seeming severity. God is clearing the ground of every excuse and every despairing sense of doom, so that each soul may deal directly and personally with Him. He is preparing His people for a covenant so intimate that it will reach every single heart, one by one. And to that covenant the chapter now rises.

Jeremiah 31:31–34 (BSB)

³¹ Behold, 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. ³² It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant they broke, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. 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 in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they will be My people. ³⁴ No longer will each man teach his neighbor or 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 iniquities and will remember their sins no more.”

Here we stand at the summit, not only of Jeremiah but of the whole Old Testament, and I want you to read these four verses as if you were hearing them for the first time. God promises a new covenant (בְּרִית) berit, pronounced beh-REET. Strong's H1285, covenant, a solemn binding agreement. Berit is the great biblical word for covenant, a solemn, binding bond, more like a sacred marriage than a mere contract, the kind of tie God had made with Noah and Abraham and Israel at Sinai. And chadashah means new, fresh, a thing not seen before. This is the only place in the entire Old Testament where these two words are joined, berit chadashah, the new covenant, and from this single verse the whole second half of your Bible takes its name, for what we call the New Testament is simply the New Covenant. When the Lord Jesus lifted the cup and named it the new covenant in His blood, He was reaching back to this very phrase and declaring that the day Jeremiah longed for had come. Everything the old covenant could only point toward, the law written on the heart, the personal knowledge of God, the sins remembered no more, is secured for us in Christ. Learn this word, and you hold the golden thread that runs from Jeremiah’s tears straight to the table of the Lord. , and He tells us why the old one, given at Sinai, could never finally save: the people broke it. The law was holy and good, but it was written on stone tablets and could not write itself onto stubborn hearts, and so it stood over the people as a witness against them. But now God promises something entirely new. I will put My law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts. He will do on the inside what the old covenant could only demand from the outside. And see the three great gifts folded into this one promise. First, an inward law, no longer a rule you strain to keep but a desire God plants within you, so that obedience becomes the movement of a renewed heart. Second, a personal knowing: they will all know Me, from the least to the greatest, so that faith is no longer secondhand, learned only from another’s lips, but a firsthand acquaintance with the living God that even the smallest and the lowliest may have. And third, the foundation that makes the other two possible: for I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sins no more. That is the sweetest word in the whole chapter. Not managed, not merely overlooked, but forgiven fully and remembered no more, put so far away that God Himself declines to call it to mind again. And how could a holy God ever say such a thing? The answer waited five hundred years, until a night in an upper room when the Lord Jesus took a cup and said the words that unlock this entire promise: this cup is the new covenant in My blood. The forgiveness Jeremiah foretold would be bought at Calvary, sealed in the blood of the Son of God, and every soul that trusts in Him is written into this covenant forever. Give thanks, dear reader, for you were being loved even here.

Jeremiah 31:35–37 (BSB)

³⁵ Thus says the LORD, who gives the sun for light by day, who sets in order the moon and stars for light by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar—the LORD of Hosts is His name: ³⁶ “Only if this fixed order departed from My presence, declares the LORD, would Israel’s descendants ever cease to be a nation before Me.” ³⁷ This is what the LORD says: “Only if the heavens above could be measured and the foundations of the earth below searched out would I reject all of Israel’s descendants because of all they have done,” declares the LORD.

Lest anyone fear that so great a promise might yet fail, the LORD now anchors it to the very frame of creation. He names Himself as the One who hangs the sun in the sky and orders the moon and the stars and rouses the sea until its waves roar, the LORD of Hosts, the God of all the armies of heaven and earth. And He swears by His own unbreakable order: only if the sun and moon and stars should abandon their courses, only if a man could measure the height of the heavens or dig out the foundations of the earth, only then would He cast off His people. In other words, never. As surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, God will keep His covenant. This is meant to steady the trembling soul. The faithfulness that upholds the stars is the same faithfulness pledged to everyone He has drawn to Himself in everlasting love. His promises are as fixed as the created order, and firmer still.

Jeremiah 31:38–40 (BSB)

³⁸ “The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when this city will be rebuilt for Me, from the tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate. ³⁹ The measuring line will once again stretch out straight to the hill of Gareb and then turn toward Goah. ⁴⁰ The whole valley of the dead bodies and ashes, and all the fields as far as the Kidron Valley, to the corner of the Horse Gate to the east, will be holy to the LORD. It will never again be uprooted or demolished.”

The chapter closes by coming back down to solid ground, to streets and gates a person could walk. God promises that the very city about to be leveled will be rebuilt for Him, and He traces its future walls tower by tower and gate by gate, as if He can already see them standing. And then He does the most wonderful thing of all with the ruined places. The valley of the dead bodies and the ash heaps, the place of burning and refuse outside the walls, the ugliest and most defiled corner of the whole city, He declares that even this will be holy to the LORD. Nothing is left over as too far gone for His grace. The place of death itself is claimed for holiness. And the final word is a promise of permanence: it will never again be uprooted or demolished. The homecoming He has been describing is no fragile thing that could be lost a second time. What God builds under the new covenant, He builds forever. From everlasting love in the first verses to a city that can never fall in the last, the whole chapter tells one story: God takes hold of a broken people and makes them, and keeps them, His own.