The Covenant Written in the Heart

The Lord tells Judah what the covenant asks: “Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people” (Jer. 7:23). Israel and Judah break it. Then the Lord promises a new covenant, in which He will put His law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts, and Hebrews says of Jesus that “he is the mediator of a better covenant” (Heb. 8:6).

The covenant broken

The formula stands inside a command, given, Jer. 11:4 says, “in the day that I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt”: “Obey my voice… so shall ye be my people, and I will be your God.” Chapter 11 is about “breaking the covenant of obedience”:¹ “The house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant which I made with their fathers” (Jer. 11:10). In Hebrew, 11:10 and 31:32 share the verb form for “broken” and the words “which I made with their fathers,” and those words stand nowhere else in the book.² See Jeremiah 11.

What is written on the heart

“The sin of Judah is written with a pen of iron… it is graven upon the table of their heart” (Jer. 17:1). The metaphors “speak of how deeply sin was imbedded in Judah’s consciousness.”³ In Hebrew, 17:1 and 31:33 are the only two verses in Jeremiah where a form of “write” governs “heart.”² See Jeremiah 17, and Jeremiah 4 for “circumcise… your heart.”

The new covenant

Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah… I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people… for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. (Jer. 31:31, Jer. 31:33–34)

Three times the law is something the Lord “set before” them (Jer. 9:13; Jer. 26:4; Jer. 44:10); here, with the same Hebrew verb, He will “put” it “in their inward parts.”² The Lord is the one who acts: “I will put… and write it… I will forgive.” And the two-part formula, a condition in 7:23 and 11:4, is a promise everywhere else it stands: Jer. 24:7, Jer. 30:22, Jer. 31:1, Jer. 31:33 and Jer. 32:38.²

The promise reaches the heart itself: “I will give them an heart to know me” (Jer. 24:7); “I will give them one heart, and one way… And I will make an everlasting covenant with them” (Jer. 32:39–40). Chapters 30–33 are “prophecies of the latter-day restoration of Israel and the gospel covenant.”⁴ See Jeremiah 31, Jeremiah 32 and Scattered and Gathered.

The mediator

Hebrews quotes Jeremiah’s promise (Heb. 8:8–12) to show that the Lord “would someday make a new covenant with Israel,”⁵ and calls Jesus “the mediator of the new covenant” (Heb. 12:24). At the Last Supper He says, “This cup is the new testament in my blood” (Luke 22:20); “testament” is the Greek word for covenant,¹ and in presenting the cup He “was signaling the fulfillment of the old covenant and the establishment of the new covenant.”⁶ Paul writes of an epistle “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 Cor. 3:3), “pointing to the fulfillment of a prophecy of Jeremiah.”⁷ The Joseph Smith Translation of Gal. 3:20 reads, “there is one mediator of the new covenant, who is Christ.”⁸

Offered, rejected, and offered again

Jeremiah’s promise is “with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah.” Jews in New Testament times “generally rejected this new covenant,” but “it would again be offered to them at a later time.”⁵ Joseph Smith wrote in 1833 that “Christ in the days of his flesh proposed to make a covenant with them but they rejected him and his proposals,” so that “no covenant was made with them at that time but their unbelief has not rendered the promise of God of none effect.”⁹

So Jeremiah 31:31–34 is read of “the restoration of the gospel through the Prophet Joseph Smith and the day when God’s covenant will truly be established with His people,”¹⁰ “new” meaning that the covenant “would be revealed anew to the house of Israel.”¹¹ D&C 45:9 (“I have sent mine everlasting covenant into the world”) is cross-referenced to Jer. 31:33, and D&C 84:57 to Jer. 31:31.¹ For the returning people’s “perpetual covenant” (Jer. 50:5), see Scattered and Gathered.

Sources

1. The Holy Scriptures (Latter-day Saint editions), text and chapter headings, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. ↩ ↩ ↩
2. Westminster Leningrad Codex, with morphology, Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (OSHB), openscriptures/morphhb. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
3. Chapter 23: As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap (Jeremiah 1–19), Old Testament Student Manual: 1 Kings–Malachi (2003). ↩
4. “Jeremiah”, Bible Dictionary. ↩
5. Chapter 49: Hebrews 7–13, New Testament Student Manual (Church Educational System, 2014). ↩ ↩
6. Chapter 9: Matthew 26, New Testament Student Manual (Church Educational System, 2014). ↩
7. Chapter 41: 2 Corinthians 1–5, New Testament Student Manual (Church Educational System, 2014). ↩
8. Joseph Smith Translation, Galatians 3:19–20, Joseph Smith Translation Appendix, Gospel Library. ↩
9. Letter to Noah C. Saxton, 4 January 1833, The Joseph Smith Papers. ↩
10. Chapter 25: Prophecies of a Latter-day Gathering (Jeremiah 23; 30–31; 33; 46–51; Obadiah), Old Testament Student Manual: 1 Kings–Malachi (2003). ↩
11. Lesson 135: Jeremiah 30–33, Old Testament Seminary Teacher Manual. ↩