Jeremiah 31:4

Jeremiah 31 belongs to the part of the book often called the Book of Consolation (Jeremiah 30–33). Jeremiah prophesied from the late seventh century into the early sixth century before Christ, and for most of those years he warned Judah that its idolatry and unfaithfulness would bring ruin. He lived to see it come. The northern kingdom of Israel had already fallen to Assyria in 722 BC and its people had been scattered. Then Babylon besieged Jerusalem, destroyed the city and the temple, ended the reign of David’s line and carried the people away for the seventy years Jeremiah had foretold (Jeremiah 25:11–12).

In these chapters the message turns. The God who sent judgment now speaks of return, rebuilding and joy, and this chapter goes on to the promise of the new covenant (Jeremiah 31:31–34). These six verses speak to both halves of the divided people. Verse 1 names all the families of Israel, verse 5 names Samaria, the old capital of the north, and verse 6 names mount Ephraim. A nation broken in two and scattered for generations hears that God still claims every part of it.

Verse 1 opens with “At the same time”, in Hebrew ba’et ha’hi, “in that time”. It points forward to the time God has appointed for turning his people’s sorrow into restoration, a time the prophets often tie to the last days and the coming of the Messiah. “Saith the LORD” (nᵉʼum Yᵉhôvâh) marks the promise as God’s own oracle. Yᵉhôvâh is his personal, covenant name, the name of the self-existent and eternal One, so the promise is as sure as he is.

The heart of the verse is the covenant formula: “will I be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people.” God spoke these words over Israel when he brought them out of Egypt: “And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God” (Exodus 6:7). Moses renewed them before the people entered the land (Deuteronomy 29:13). They describe a bond of mutual belonging. God gives himself to his people as their God, and they belong to him as his own, under his care and protection. Israel had broken that bond, and here God promises to mend it. He can, because he is unchanging: “For I am the LORD, I change not” (Malachi 3:6). The word for God here, ʼĕlôhîym, is plural in form, and when it names the true God it is a plural of majesty, usually with a singular verb. Set beside the LORD’s own name, it stresses the might of the One who makes the promise.

The same words echo through Scripture. Hosea heard God promise to say to those “which were not my people, Thou art my people” (Hosea 2:23). Ezekiel saw the sticks of Judah and Ephraim joined into one in God’s hand, a picture of the two kingdoms made one nation again, with God dwelling among them as their God (Ezekiel 37). At the very end a voice from the throne says, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God” (Revelation 21:3).

Verse 2 begins with “Thus saith the LORD”, where the verb ʼâmar simply means to say, and the weight of the words lies in the One who says them. “The people which were left of the sword” are the survivors. The word sârîyd means one who escaped or was left after a defeat or danger, and the chereb, the sword, stands for the war that brought judgment. These survivors are still a people (ʻam), and God’s purpose goes on through them.

They “found grace in the wilderness”. The word chên means graciousness or favour, and here it is the favour God shows to people who have no claim on it. The verb mâtsâʼ means to find or attain. The wilderness, midbâr, is the open country beyond the settled land, wilderness or desert. For Israel the word recalled the forty years after the Exodus, when God fed his people in barren country, and “the children of Israel did eat manna forty years” (Exodus 16). Moses told them to “remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee” (Deuteronomy 8:2).

The verse sets the exile beside that memory. The survivors of Babylon’s sword are in a wilderness of their own, far from home, and grace meets them there as it met their fathers. God preserved a remnant, sustained them through the years of captivity, gave them prophets such as Ezekiel and Daniel, and in the end brought them home as he had promised: “after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place” (Jeremiah 29:10). Hosea speaks of the wilderness with the same hope: “I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her” (Hosea 2:14–15). Isaiah hears God say, “I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert” (Isaiah 43:19–20), and he promises that God is with his people when they pass through the waters and the rivers (Isaiah 43:2). The grace they found came within their hardship, in God’s presence and provision there.

“Even Israel, when I went to cause him to rest.” Yisrâʼêl here is the whole covenant people. “I went” is hâlak, to go or walk, and it shows God himself setting out to act for them. “To cause him to rest” uses râgaʻ, a verb that can describe the sea tossing, and in the sense used here means to settle or grow quiet. God brings his tossed and wandering people to a settled peace in their own land, under his care.

Verse 3 is the best-known line of the passage and the root of every promise around it. “The LORD hath appeared of old unto me, saying” grounds what follows in God’s long history with his people, reaching back to his covenant with Abraham and the deliverance from Egypt. What he says next is as old as his dealings with them.

“Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love.” The verb ʼâhab means to love, to have affection for. God speaks of a personal, settled affection for his people, and all his deeds toward them flow from it. “Thee” is first of all the nation of Israel, north and south together, in exile or about to go. The word for everlasting, ʻôwlâm, properly means what is hidden from view, the vanishing point, and so time out of mind. It reaches back into the distant past and forward into an unending future. God’s love for his people began further back than they can trace and will outlast anything they can see ahead. It holds steady through their failures, through changing times, and through the discipline their sin brought on them. A psalm says the same: “But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him” (Psalm 103:17).

This love came first. God says “I have loved” and “I have drawn”, so the relationship rests on his prior choice and pursuit. John writes, “We love him, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). For a people who had watched Jerusalem fall and wondered whether God had abandoned them, this was the word they needed. His love had outlasted the disaster.

“Again I will build thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel.” The verb bânâh means to build, and Scripture uses it of houses and cities and also of a people. God says it twice, once as the builder and once of Israel as the one built, and the repetition makes the promise certain. He will rebuild towns and homes, and with them the life of the nation, its order and its worship. Earlier Jeremiah had wept over the ruined land and heard God say, “I will make Jerusalem heaps, and a den of dragons” (Jeremiah 9:10–11). Now the same God promises to build.

“Thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets.” The tôph, the tabret, is a tambourine, played in Israel at feasts, processions and victories. After the crossing of the Red Sea, Miriam took a timbrel and the women followed her with timbrels and dances (Exodus 15:20). Jephthah’s daughter came out to meet her father with timbrels and dances (Judges 11:34), and the women of Israel met David the same way after his victory (1 Samuel 18:6). In exile that music had fallen silent. God promises that it will sound again, as the psalmist sings, “Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing” (Psalm 30:11), and as Isaiah promises “the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness” (Isaiah 61:3).

This joy is God’s work as much as the rebuilt walls are. The new covenant later in this chapter promises a changed heart, and Ezekiel heard God say, “A new heart also will I give you” (Ezekiel 36:26–27). The building and the dancing are the outward signs of a people reconciled to their God.

“Thou shalt yet plant vines upon the mountains of Samaria.” Samaria was the capital of the northern kingdom, and its mountains are the central highlands of the north. When Assyria conquered the kingdom in 722 BC and carried off its people, those hills became a sign of God’s judgment. Now he promises that they will be planted again. The word translated vines, kerem, means a garden or vineyard. Vineyards were a staple of Israel’s farming and a picture of blessing, and Isaiah’s song of the vineyard pictures Israel itself as God’s vineyard (Isaiah 5:1–7). The verb nâṭaʻ means to plant, and the verse uses it three times. A vineyard takes years of work before it bears, so planting one is a sign that the planter expects to live there in peace for a long time.

Other prophets give the same promise. Amos says that God’s people “shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof”, and that God “will plant them upon their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them” (Amos 9:13–15). Isaiah says, “they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them” (Isaiah 65:21–23), and Ezekiel hears people say, “This land that was desolate is become like the garden of Eden” (Ezekiel 36:33–36).

“For there shall be a day.” The word yôwm means a day or a span of time, and here it is the appointed time when God acts. The watchmen, from nâtsar, to guard or keep, were guards posted on walls and heights to look out for danger and raise the alarm. In the prophets the word is also used for those entrusted with God’s message to his people. On that day the watchmen of mount Ephraim will cry out with a summons to worship: “Arise ye, and let us go up to Zion unto the LORD our God.”

Mount Ephraim is the hill country of the tribe of Ephraim, the leading tribe of the northern kingdom, whose name often stood for the whole kingdom. Those tribes had been conquered and scattered by Assyria long before, and their return looked impossible. Zion, Tsîyôwn, is a mountain of Jerusalem and a name for the city itself, especially the temple mount where God made his presence known. Jerusalem was Judah’s capital, so a call from Ephraim to Zion pictures north and south united again and worshipping together. It also recalls the pilgrimages the Law commanded, when all the men of Israel went up three times a year for the feasts of unleavened bread, weeks and tabernacles (Deuteronomy 16:16). God had promised to bring his people back from captivity (Jeremiah 30:3) and to gather them from all the countries where he had driven them (Jeremiah 32:37), and here the gathered people go up gladly to meet him. The watchmen call him “the LORD our God”, and the covenant of verse 1 is whole again.

The prophets see this procession widening to take in the nations. Isaiah says, “many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD” (Isaiah 2:2–3), and Zechariah sees men of every nation take hold of a Jew’s robe and say, “We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you” (Zechariah 8:20–23).

Jeremiah’s promises came true first in the return from Babylon, and their full meaning is found in Jesus Christ. He inaugurated the new covenant of this chapter with his own blood: “This cup is the new testament in my blood” (Luke 22:20). Hebrews calls him “the mediator of a better covenant” and quotes Jeremiah’s promise at length (Hebrews 8). Through him the covenant formula of verse 1 reaches beyond Israel’s borders. Gentiles who believe are grafted in among the branches of Israel’s olive tree (Romans 11:17), and Peter tells believers, “ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people” (1 Peter 2:9).

The everlasting love of verse 3 is shown most fully at the cross. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (John 3:16), and “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Paul writes that God, “who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us”, made us alive with Christ when we were dead in sins (Ephesians 2:4–5). The Son is “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), so in him we see who this loving God is. The drawing of verse 3 is his work too: “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me” (John 12:32).

The grace of verse 2 came in person when the Word was made flesh, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Jesus is the good shepherd who gathers his scattered sheep (John 10:11), and the rest of verse 2 is his to give: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). “There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God” (Hebrews 4:9–10).

The builder of verse 4 is building still: “upon this rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). Paul longed to present the church “as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:2), and Christ will present it to himself “a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle” (Ephesians 5:27). The vines of verse 5 point to the one who said, “I am the vine, ye are the branches” (John 15:1–5), and the dancing of verse 4 has its counterpart in the joy that is part of the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23). That joy will be complete when “God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes” (Revelation 21:4).

The call of verse 6 now goes out in the gospel to Jew and Gentile alike. Christ “hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us” (Ephesians 2:14–16), and both are built together into “an holy temple in the Lord” (Ephesians 2:19–22). Believers “are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Hebrews 12:22–24). The LORD our God has come near as Emmanuel, “God with us” (Matthew 1:23), and as “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), and his people worship the Father “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23–24).

If you belong to Christ, the words of verse 3 are spoken over you as well. God’s love for you was there before your faith, and your faith is the fruit of his drawing. That love held for Israel through failure, discipline and exile, and it holds for his people still. Grace can be found in a wilderness, because God goes there with his own.

These verses also show where God’s love leads. It rebuilds what was in ruins, puts music and dancing back where there was mourning, and gives his people time to plant and live to eat the fruit. And it ends in worship. The watchmen say “let us go up”, together, to “the LORD our God”. The God who has loved us with an everlasting love calls us to rise and go up with his people to worship him.