Jeremiah 31:36

If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

MacLaren's Expositions

Jeremiah

WHAT THE STABLE CREATION TEACHES

Jeremiah 31:36.

This is the seal of the new covenant, which is to be made in days future to the prophet and his contemporaries, with the house of Israel and of Judah. That new covenant is referred to in Hebrews as the fundamental law of Christ’s kingdom. Therefore we have the right to take to ourselves the promises which it contains, and to think of ‘the house of Israel’ and ‘the seed of Jacob’ as including us, ‘though Abraham be ignorant of us.’

The covenant and its pledge are equally grand. The very idea of a covenant as applied to God is wonderful. It is meant to teach us that, from all the infinite modes of action possible to Him, He has chosen One; that He has, as it were, marked out a path for Himself, and confined the freedom of His will and the manifold omnipotences of His power to prescribed limits, that He has determined the course of His future action. It is meant to teach us, too, the other grand thought that He has declared to us what that course is, not leaving us to learn it piecemeal by slow building up of conclusions about His mind from His actions as they come forth, but inversely telling us His mind and purpose in articulate and authentic words by which we are to interpret each successive work of His. He makes known His purposes. ‘Before they spring forth I tell you of them.’

It is meant to teach us, too, that He regards Himself as bound by the declaration which He has made, so that we may rest secure on this strong foundation of His faithfulness and His truth, and for all doubts and fears find the sufficient cure in His own declaration: ‘My covenant will I not break nor alter the thing that is gone out of My lips.’ No wonder that the dying king found the strength of his failing heart in the thought, ‘He hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure.’

The weighty promises of this solemn bond of God’s cover the whole ground of our spiritual necessities-forgiveness of sins, true, personal, direct acquaintance with God, an intercommunion of mutual possession between Him who is ours and us who are His, and an inward sanctification by which His precepts shall coincide with our desires. These are the blessings which He binds Himself to bestow.

And of this transcendent pact, the seal and guarantee is worthy. God descends to ratify a bond with man. By it He binds Himself to give all possible good for the soul. And to confirm it heaven and earth are called in. He points us to all that is august, stable, immense, inscrutable in the works of His hands, and bids us see there His pledge that He will be a faithful, covenant-keeping God. Sun, moon and stars, heaven, earth and sea-’ye are My witnesses,’ saith the Lord.

God’s unchangeable love is the true lesson from the stable regularity of the universe. The tone in which Scripture speaks of external nature in all its parts is very remarkable, altogether peculiar. It does not take the aesthetic or the scientific, but the purely religious point of view.

I. The facts. All nature is directly the effect of God’s will and power. ‘He giveth,’ ‘He divideth’ {Jeremiah 31:35}.

The physical universe presents a spectacle of stable regularity.

This regularity is the consequence of sovereign, divine will. These ordinances are not laws of nature, but of God.

II. The use commonly made of the facts.

Ordinary unthinking worldliness sees nothing noticeable in them because they come uniformly. Earthquakes startle, but the firmness of the solid earth attracts no observation. God is thought to speak in the extraordinary, but most men do not hear His voice in the normal.

Scientific godlessness formularises this tendency into a system, and proclaims that laws are everything and God a mere algebraical x.

III. The lesson which they are meant to teach.

God’s works are a revelation of God.

There is nothing in effect which is not in cause, and the stability of these ordinances carries our thoughts back to an unchanging Ordainer.

They witness to His constancy of purpose or will. His acts do not come from caprice, nor are done as experiments, but are the stable expression of uniform and unchanging will.

They witness to His unfailing energy of power, which ‘operates unspent’ and is to-day as fresh as at creation’s birth.

They witness to a single end pursued through all changes, and by all varieties of means. Darkness and light, sun rising and setting, storm and sunshine, summer and winter, all serve one end. As a horizontal thrust may give rise to opposite circular motions which all issue in working out an onward progress, so the various dealings of Providence with us are all adapted to ‘work together,’ and that ‘for good.’

They witness that life, joy, beauty, flow from obedience.

Thus, then, these ordinances in their stability are witnesses. But they are inferior witnesses. The noblest revelation of the divine faithfulness and unchangeable purpose of good is in Jesus. And these witnesses will one day pass. Even now they have their changes, slow and unmarked by a short-lived man. Stars burn out, there have been violent convulsions, shocks and shatterings in the heavens, and a time comes, as even physical science predicts, when ‘the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment,’ but that to which they witnessed shall endure, ‘My salvation shall be for ever, and My righteousness shall not be abolished.’ The created lights grow dim and die out, but in ‘the Father of lights’ is ‘no variableness, neither shadow that is cast by turning.’

Hence we see what our confidence should be. It should stand firm and changeless as the Covenant, and we should move in our orbits as the stars and hearken to the voice of His word as do they. Let us see to it that we have faith to match His faithfulness, and that our confidence shall be firmer than the mountains, more stable than the stars.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

31:35-40 As surely as the heavenly bodies will continue their settled course, according to the will of their Creator, to the end of time, and as the raging sea obeys him, so surely will the Jews be continued a separate people. Words can scarcely set forth more strongly the restoration of Israel. The rebuilding of Jerusalem, and its enlargement and establishment, shall be an earnest of the great things God will do for the gospel church. The personal happiness of every true believer, as well as the future restoration of Israel, is secured by promise, covenant, and oath. This Divine love passes knowledge; and to those who take hold upon it, every present mercy is an earnest of salvation.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

If those - If these. From the uniformity of God's operations in the material world, the prophet deduces the certainty of a similar uniformity in God's dealings with man in things spiritual.

A nation - A people. Israel has long ceased to be a nation, but it still exists as a numerous, influential, and distinct people. In Matthew 28:19-20 Jeremiah's prophecy receives its Christian application, and Israel becomes the Church, with the promise of perpetual existence. It has no national existence, but its members ought to be a strongly marked people, refusing to be merged in the world, while everywhere they pervade and influence it.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

36. a nation—Israel's national polity has been broken up by the Romans. But their preservation as a distinct people amidst violent persecutions, though scattered among all nations for eighteen centuries, unamalgamated, whereas all other peoples under such circumstances have become incorporated with the nations in which they have been dispersed, is a perpetual standing miracle (compare Jer 33:20; Ps 148:6; Isa 54:9, 10).

Matthew Poole's Commentary

There are ordinances of worship, which are God’s laws relating to his worship; and ordinances of justice, which are God’s laws for the executing civil justice; and ordinances of nature, which are God’s establishments for the working of natural causes in their order; these are those here spoken of, which shall hold and continue to the dissolution of the world, the continuance of which God pawneth as a pledge of the continuance of Israel as a nation all the days, (so it is in the Hebrew,) that is, many days, or all the days they shall keep close with him, or which he hath appointed. If we interpret it (as in our version)

for ever, it must be understood not of Israel according to the flesh, but of the church, the true Israel of God, which shall never fail.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the Lord,.... Of the sun, moon, and stars; should these leave their proper course, and not perform their several functions, or do the service appointed for them; should they desert their master, or disobey his orders, turn away from him, and pay no regard to the laws and rules he has set them:

then the seed of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before me for ever; but, as the former is impossible, so is the latter, The Jews ceased not from being a nation through their captivity in Babylon, nor through their destruction by the Romans; they continue a distinct nation and people to this day, though scattered throughout the nations of the world: though this rather refers to the spiritual Israel, the holy nation and peculiar people; Christ will have a seed to serve him as long as the sun and moon endure; his church shall continue to the end of the world; it is built on a rock; and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.

Geneva Study Bible

If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

36. As soon shall the Divine decrees which regulate the course of nature be dissolved, as Israel be utterly rejected from its status as the people of Jehovah.

Jeremiah 31:36

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

The character of the new covenant: "I (Jahveh) give (will put) my law within them, and write it upon their heart." בּקרבּם is the opposite of נתן לפניהם, which is constantly used of the Sinaitic law, cf. Jeremiah 9:12; Deuteronomy 4:8; Deuteronomy 11:32; 1 Kings 9:6; and the "writing on the heart" is opposed to writing on the tables of stone, Exodus 31:18, cf. Jeremiah 32:15., Jeremiah 34:8, Deuteronomy 4:13; Deuteronomy 9:11; Deuteronomy 10:4, etc. The difference, therefore, between the old and the new covenants consists in this, that in the old the law was laid before the people that they might accept it and follow it, receiving it into their hearts, as the copy of what God not merely required of men, but offered and vouchsafed to them for their happiness; while in the new it is put within, implanted into the heart and soul by the Spirit of God, and becomes the animating life-principle, 2 Corinthians 3:3. The law of the Lord thus forms, in the old as well as in the new covenant, the kernel and essence of the relation instituted between the Lord and His people; and the difference between the two consists merely in this, that the will of God as expressed in the law under the old covenant was presented externally to the people, while under the new covenant it is to become an internal principle of life. Now, even in the old covenant, we not only find that Israel is urged to receive the law of the Lord his God into his heart, - to make the law presented to him from without the property of his heart, as it were, - but even Moses, we also find, promises that God will circumcise the heart of the people, that they may love God the Lord with all their heart and all their soul (Deuteronomy 30:6). But this circumcision of heart and this love of God with the whole soul, which are repeatedly required in the law (Deuteronomy 6:5; Deuteronomy 10:12, Deuteronomy 10:16), are impossibilities, unless the law be received into the heart. It thus appears that the difference between the old and the new covenants must be reduced to this, that what was commanded and applied to the heart in the old is given in the new, and the new is but the completion of the old covenant. This is, indeed, the true relation between them, as is clearly shown by the fact, that the essential element of the new covenant, "I will be their God, and they shall be my people," was set forth as the object of the old; cf. Leviticus 26:12 with Exodus 29:45. Nevertheless the difference is not merely one of degree, but one of kind. The demands of the law, "Keep the commandments of your God," "Be ye holy as the Lord your God is holy," cannot be fulfilled by sinful man. Even when he strives most earnestly to keep the commands of the law, he cannot satisfy its requirements. The law, with its rigid demands, can only humble the sinner, and make him beseech God to blot out his sin and create in him a clean heart (Psalm 51:11.); it can only awaken him to the perception of sin, but cannot blot it out. It is God who must forgive this, and by forgiving it, write His will on the heart. The forgiveness of sin, accordingly, is mentioned, Jeremiah 31:34, at the latter part of the promise, as the basis of the new covenant. But the forgiveness of sins is a work of grace which annuls the demand of the law against men. In the old covenant, the law with its requirements is the impelling force; in the new covenant, the grace shown in the forgiveness of sins is the aiding power by which man attains that common life with God which the law sets before him as the great problem of life. It is in this that the qualitative difference between the old and the new covenants consists. The object which both set before men for attainment is the same, but the means of attaining it are different in each. In the old covenant are found commandment and requirement; in the new, grace and giving. Certainly, even under the old covenant, God bestowed on the people of Israel grace and the forgiveness of sins, and, by the institution of sacrifice, had opened up a way of access by which men might approach Him and rejoice in His gracious gifts; His Spirit, moreover, produced in the heart of the godly ones the feeling that their sins were forgiven, and that they were favoured of God. But even this institution and this working of the Holy Spirit on and in the heart, was no more than a shadow and prefiguration of what is actually offered and vouchsafed under the new covenant, Hebrews 10:1. The sacrifices of the old covenant are but prefigurations of the true atoning-offering of Christ, by which the sins of the whole world are atoned for and blotted out.

In Jeremiah 31:34 are unfolded the results of God's putting His law in the heart. The knowledge of the Lord will then no longer be communicated by the outward teaching of every man to his fellow, but all, small and great, will be enlightened and taught by the Spirit of God (Isaiah 54:13) to know the Lord; cf. Joel 3:1., Isaiah 11:9. These words do not imply that, under the new covenant, "the office of the teacher of religion must cease" (Hitzig); and as little is "disparity in the imparting of the knowledge of God silently excluded" in Jeremiah 31:33. The meaning simply is this, that the knowledge of God will then no longer be dependent on the communication and instruction of man. The knowledge of Jahveh, of which the prophet speaks, is not the theoretic knowledge which is imparted and acquired by means of religious instruction; it is rather knowledge of divine grace based upon the inward experience of the heart, which knowledge the Holy Spirit works in the heart by assuring the sinner that he has indeed been adopted as a son of God through the forgiveness of his sins. This knowledge, as being an inward experience of grace, does not exclude religious instruction, but rather tacitly implies that there is intimation given of God's desire to save and of His purpose of grace. The correct understanding of the words results from a right perception of the contrast involved in them, viz., that under the old covenant the knowledge of the Lord was connected with the mediation of priests and prophets. Just as, at Sinai, the sinful people could not endure that the Lord should address them directly, but retreated, terrified by the awful manifestation of the Lord on the mountain, and said entreatingly to Moses, "Speak thou with us and we will hear, but let not God speak with us, lest we die" (Exodus 20:15); so, under the old covenant economy generally, access to the Lord was denied to individuals, and His grace was only obtained by the intervention of human mediators. This state of matters has been abolished under the new covenant, inasmuch as the favoured sinner is placed in immediate relation to God by the Holy Spirit. Hebrews 4:16; Ephesians 3:12.

In order to give good security that the promise of a new covenant would be fulfilled, the Lord, in Jeremiah 31:35., points to the everlasting duration of the arrangements of nature, and declares that, if this order of nature were to cease, then Israel also would cease to be a people before Him; i.e., the continuance of Israel as the people of God shall be like the laws of nature. Thus the eternal duration of the new covenant is implicitly declared. Hengstenberg contests the common view of Jeremiah 31:35 and Jeremiah 31:36, according to which the reference is to the firm, unchangeable continuance of God's laws in nature, which everything must obey; and he is of opinion that, in Jeremiah 31:35, it is merely the omnipotence of God that is spoken of, that this proves He is God and not man, and that there is thus formed a basis for the statement set forth in Jeremiah 31:35, so full of comfort for the doubting covenant people; that God does not life, that He can never repent of His covenant and His promises. But the arguments adduced for this, and against the common view, are not decisive. The expression "stirring the sea, so that its waves roar," certainly serves in the original passage, Isaiah 51:15, from which Jeremiah has taken it, to bring the divine omnipotence into prominence; but it does not follow from this that here also it is merely the omnipotence of God that is pointed out. Although, in rousing the sea, "no definite rule that we can perceive is observed, no uninterrupted return," yet it is repeated according to the unchangeable ordinance of God, though not every day, like the rising and setting of the heavenly bodies. And in Jeremiah 31:35, under the expression "these ordinances" are comprehended the rousing of the sea as well as the movements of the moon and stars; further, the departure, i.e., the cessation, of these natural phenomena is mentioned as impossible, to signify that Israel cannot cease to exist as a people; hence the emphasis laid on the immutability of these ordinances of nature. Considered in itself, the putting of the sun for a light by day, and the appointment of the moon and stars for a light by night, are works of the almighty power of God, just as the sea is roused so that its waves roar; but, that these phenomena never cease, but always recur as long as the present world lasts, is a proof of the immutability of these works of the omnipotence of God, and it is this point alone which here receives consideration. "The ordinances of the moon and of the stars" mean the established arrangements as regards the phases of the moon, and the rising and setting of the different stars. "From being a nation before me" declares not merely the continuance of Israel as a nation, so that they shall not disappear from the earth, just as so many others perish in the course of ages, but also their continuance before Jahveh, i.e., as His chosen people; cf. Jeremiah 30:20. - This positive promise regarding the continuance of Israel is confirmed by a second simile, in Jeremiah 31:37, which declares the impossibility of rejection. The measurement of the heavens and the searching of the foundations, i.e., of the inmost depths, of the earth, is regarded as an impossibility. God will not reject the whole seed of Israel: here כּל is to be attentively considered. As Hengstenberg correctly remarks, the hypocrites are deprived of the comfort which they could draw from these promises. Since the posterity of Israel are not all rejected, the rejection of the dead members of the people, i.e., unbelievers, is not thereby excluded, but included. That the whole cannot perish "is no bolster for the sin of any single person." The prophet adds: "because of all that they have done," i.e., because of their sins, their apostasy from God, in order to keep believing ones from despair on account of the greatness of their sins. On this, Calvin makes the appropriate remark: Consulto propheta hic proponit scelera populi, ut sciamus superiorem fore Dei clementiam, nec congeriem tot malorum fore obstaculo, quominus Deus ignoscat. If we keep before our mind these points in the promise contained in this verse, we shall not, like Graf, find in Jeremiah 31:37 merely a tame repetition of what has already been said, and be inclined to take the verse as a superfluous marginal gloss.

(Note: Hitzig even thinks that, "because the style and the use of language betoken the second Isaiah, and the order of both strophes is reversed in the lxx (i.e., Jeremiah 31:37 stands before Jeremiah 31:35.), Jeremiah 31:35, Jeremiah 31:36 may have stood in the margin at the beginning of the genuine portion in Jeremiah 31:27-34, and Jeremiah 31:37, on the other hand, in the margin at Jeremiah 31:34." But, that the verses, although they present reminiscences of the second Isaiah, do not quite prove that the language is his, has already been made sufficiently evident by Graf, who points out that, in the second Isaiah, המה is nowhere used of the roaring of the sea, nor do we meet with חקּות and חקּים, ישׁבּתוּ מהיות, כּל־היּמים, nor again הקר in the Niphal, or מוסדי ארץ (but מוסדות in Isaiah 40:21); other expressions are not peculiar to the second Isaiah, since they also occur in other writings. - But the transposition of the verses in the lxx, in view of the arbitrary treatment of the text of Jeremiah in that version, cannot be made to prove anything whatever.)