Hebrews 8:9

“For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second.” The first covenant is the one God made with Israel at Sinai through Moses. The word for faultless, ámemptos, means blameless or irreproachable. A covenant like that would have left room for nothing more, so when God himself looked ahead to a second covenant, he showed that the first was lacking. The verb for “sought”, zētéō, means to seek, desire or require. The writer leaves the seeker unnamed, and the next verse shows who it is: God, who says “I will make a new covenant”. The new covenant is God’s own provision for what the first could not do.

The lack lay in what the first covenant could accomplish. Its sacrifices “could not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the conscience” (Hebrews 9:9), and the law had “a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things” (Hebrews 10:1). That is why the same sacrifices were offered year after year (Hebrews 10:1–4). The writer has already spoken of the former commandment’s “weakness and unprofitableness”, and added, “For the law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did; by the which we draw nigh unto God” (Hebrews 7:18–19). The first covenant was given by God and good for its time, and it was always preparing the way for something fuller.

Verses 8 to 12 quote Jeremiah 31:31–34. Jeremiah spoke these words to a nation in decline, facing exile because it had broken God’s covenant again and again (Jeremiah 31), and his message was hope: a restored people and a renewed closeness to God. The small word “For” that opens verse 8, gár, gives the reason for verse 7. The proof that a second covenant was sought is that God promised one.

“Behold, the days come, saith the Lord” is the prophets’ way of announcing something certain that God will bring about in his own time. “Behold”, idoú, is a command that calls for attention, and “the Lord”, kýrios, is the one supreme in authority. The verb “make”, synteléō, means to complete entirely or to carry out, so God speaks of a covenant he will bring to its full effect himself.

The word for covenant, diathḗkē, means a disposition, a covenant or a will, and comes from a verb meaning to put apart. In the covenants of Scripture, with Noah, Abraham, Moses and David, God is the one who sets the terms, and this covenant is his work from first to last. The word for new, kainós, means new, fresh or unused, and it can describe what is new as better than the old. Hebrews uses it in that fuller sense, for Jesus is “made a surety of a better testament” (Hebrews 7:22).

The promise comes at the turning point of the letter. The writer has shown that God’s final word is spoken in his Son (Hebrews 1:1–3), who is “made so much better than the angels” (Hebrews 1:4). He has shown Jesus to be a priest after the order of Melchizedek, greater than the priests of Levi (Hebrews 7), with “a more excellent ministry” in the true sanctuary in heaven (Hebrews 8:1–6). Now he turns from the priest to the covenant the priest serves. The God who promises it is the God who swore by himself to Abraham, so that we might have “a strong consolation” in his unchanging word (Hebrews 6:13–20).

The first readers needed this. They were Jewish Christians, perhaps in Rome or elsewhere in Italy, under pressure and possibly persecution, and tempted to go back to the temple, the priesthood and the sacrifices that had shaped their people for centuries. The writer answers from their own Scriptures. A new covenant was God’s plan all along, foretold by their own prophet.

God says the new covenant will be “Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers”. The fathers are the generation that came out of Egypt and received the law at Sinai. The name Aígyptos, Egypt, takes us back to the Passover and the exodus (Exodus 12) and to the covenant made at the mountain (Exodus 19–24), whose Ten Commandments are given again in Deuteronomy 5. That covenant promised blessing for obedience and curses for disobedience.

“In the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt” is a tender picture of God’s own hand guiding his people out of slavery. Great grace and power stood at the start of that covenant, and that makes what follows all the sadder. “They continued not in my covenant.” The verb is emménō, to remain in or persevere, and from the wilderness through the judges and the kings, Israel turned again and again to rebellion and idols.

“After those days” points to a time beyond the era of the first covenant, and the promises that follow are all God’s own work. “I will put my laws into their mind” uses diánoia, from diá (through) and noûs (mind), meaning deep thought and the power to understand. “And write them in their hearts” uses epigráphō, from epí (upon) and gráphō (to write), meaning to inscribe. At Sinai God wrote his law on tablets of stone. Now he writes it within, so that his people understand his will with their minds and love it with their hearts, their wills and their desires. Obedience then comes from a changed heart that wants what God wants.

Paul describes believers in just these terms, as a letter “written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart” (2 Corinthians 3:3). Ezekiel gives the same promise: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26), and God goes on to say that he will put his Spirit within them and cause them to walk in his statutes (Ezekiel 36:26–27). Hebrews comes back to this promise later and quotes it again (Hebrews 10:16).

“I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people” is the oldest covenant promise of all. God said it at Sinai, “I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people” (Leviticus 26:12), and he said it again through Jeremiah, “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people” (Jeremiah 7:23). It means belonging on both sides. God gives himself to his people as their God, with his protection, provision and presence, and they give themselves to him. This is the goal of all his saving work, that he should dwell with his people. In Christ it comes true: we receive the adoption of sons (Galatians 4:4–7), we are “joint-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17), and through him we “have access by one Spirit unto the Father” (Ephesians 2:18).

Under the first covenant, knowledge of God passed from person to person. Parents taught their children, priests taught the people, and prophets brought God’s word. Verse 11 promises a time when every member of God’s people knows him. “Teach”, didáskō, is the ordinary word for teaching. The denial is made strong with ou mḗ, a double negative meaning “not at all” or “by no means”. The urging “Know the Lord” uses ginōskō, to know, come to know, perceive or understand. “For all shall know me” gives the reason with hóti, “because”, and here the verb is eídō, a primary verb meaning properly to see, literally or figuratively, and so to know. Its perfect oîda means “I know”, and the future “shall know” is formed from it.

“All”, pâs, takes in every one of them, “from the least to the greatest”. The least is mikrós, small, and the greatest is mégas, great in size, degree or rank. Naming the two ends takes in everyone between, whatever their age, standing or learning. Knowing the Lord belongs to every member of the new covenant community and is limited to no priestly class or learned few.

This knowledge grows out of verse 10. Because God has written his laws within, his people know him and his will from the heart. Jesus applied the same promise to those the Father draws to him: “And they shall be all taught of God” (John 6:45). John tells believers that “the same anointing teacheth you of all things” (1 John 2:27).

The last promise is the deepest, and it holds up the rest: “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.” God’s people can have his law in their hearts and know him because he has first dealt with their sin.

The word for merciful, híleōs, means propitious, favourably disposed, gracious and ready to show favour, especially in turning away judgment. In the Greek Old Testament it often translates words to do with atonement and reconciliation. Three words then cover the whole range of human wrong. Unrighteousness, adikía, is injustice and wrongdoing, both the state of being unrighteous and the acts that come from it. Sin, hamartía, comes from a verb meaning to miss the mark, and it is the broad word for every way we fall short of God. Iniquity, anomía, is lawlessness, the disregard of God’s law and order. Whatever form our wrong has taken, God’s mercy reaches it.

“Will I remember no more” is ou mḗ mnáomai éti: the strong double negative ou mḗ, the verb mnáomai, to bear in mind or remember, and éti, any longer. God says it as emphatically as it can be said. Under the first covenant the sacrifices kept sin in view: “But in those sacrifices there is a remembrance again made of sins every year” (Hebrews 10:3–4). The new covenant rests on one sacrifice, for Christ “hath appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26), and “was once offered to bear the sins of many” (Hebrews 9:26–28). “By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (Hebrews 9:12).

In verse 13 the writer draws a conclusion from a single word of the prophecy. “In that he saith, A new covenant, he hath made the first old.” When God named the covenant new, he declared the first one old. The verb palaióō means to make old, worn out or obsolete, and “hath made” is in the perfect tense, an act completed with lasting effect. God made it old by his own word, and it is a verdict on what that covenant could do now that a better one has come.

“Now that which decayeth and waxeth old is ready to vanish away.” “Decayeth” is the same verb, palaióō, and “waxeth old” is gēráskō, to grow aged. The picture is of something worn with age and near its end. “Ready” is engýs, near, and “vanish away” is aphanismós, disappearance.

Hebrews shows what has taken its place. The priests of the old covenant stood daily offering the same sacrifices, “But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God” (Hebrews 10:11–14). Paul sets the two side by side in the same way: “For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious” (2 Corinthians 3:6–11). What passes away is the Mosaic covenant as the way God’s people relate to him, with its priesthood, sacrifices and ceremonies. God’s moral law and his saving purpose remain, and in Christ the promises, types and shadows of the old covenant reach the fulfilment they always pointed to. The law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, “But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster” (Galatians 3:24–25).

Every promise in these verses comes true in Jesus. At the last supper he took the cup and said, “This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you” (Luke 22:20), and “this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins” (Matthew 26:28). He is “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). He kept the law perfectly, and “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). We are sanctified “through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10). With his own blood he entered the heavenly sanctuary, and his blood purges our conscience from dead works (Hebrews 9:11–14).

He “was raised again for our justification” (Romans 4:25), and now he is our great high priest who has passed into the heavens (Hebrews 4:14), “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners” (Hebrews 7:26–28). “He ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25). So “I regarded them not” under the old covenant gives way to “I will be merciful to their unrighteousness” under the new. God makes us “able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” (2 Corinthians 3:6). Christ is the covenant’s mediator, its surety and its heart.

If you belong to Christ, these promises are yours today. Our standing with God rests on what he has promised and what Christ has done, so we can come to him with confidence. When old sins come back to mind, God has said he will remember them no more. The same God writes his law on your heart, so obedience grows out of love for him, and his Spirit keeps shaping your mind and desires. We also share the knowledge of the Lord with every believer beside us, from the least to the greatest, and each one is someone God has taught. And the grace we have received so fully is the grace we can show others when they wrong us.