Hebrews: God’s Prophetic Promise
Hebrews 8:7-13; Jeremiah 31:31-34 - Wherein we encounter several big words and even try to understand God’s purpose for the people of Israel and Christians
“For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion sought for a second. For finding fault with them, He says,
“Behold, days are coming, says the Lord,
When I will effect a new covenant
With the house of Israel and with the house of Judah;
Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers
On the day when I took them by the hand
To lead them out of the land of Egypt;
For they did not continue in My covenant,
And I did not care for them, says the Lord.
For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel
After those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws into their minds,
And I will write them on their hearts.
And I will be their God,
And they shall be My people.
And they shall not teach everyone his fellow citizen,
And everyone his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’
For all will know Me,
From the least to the greatest of them.
For I will be merciful to their iniquities,
And I will remember their sins no more.”
When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.”
Hebrews 8:7-13 NASB1995
At the end of my last devotional, I intended to analyze Hebrews 8:7-12, but I decided to also include the last verse in this chapter. If the first covenant had been faultless between God and the chosen people, then the need for a second covenant would not be sought. But prophecy through Jeremiah identifies the coming new covenant (in the future at the time Jeremiah was written). Here’s the original passage from Jeremiah for comparison:
““Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the Lord, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.””
Jeremiah 31:31-34 NASB1995
The texts are essentially the same; humans (specifically, the people of Israel) broke the first covenant by not being able to keep the impossible laws. There is an important aspect of this prophecy: The new covenant is made with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. As I researched this passage, I became aware that I was heading down one of those bunny trails concerning the application of this prophecy, especially from a hermeneutical perspective. There’s a $10,000 word with the following AI definition:
Hermeneutics is the theory and methodology of interpretation, particularly of texts, including biblical and philosophical works. It involves understanding the meaning behind written, verbal, and non-verbal communication.
Who is this prophecy and the new covenant intended for? According to Precept Austin there are four viewpoints, quoting from a Hebrews commentary from Homer West and his study of Hebrews. I recommend fastening your seat belts, because this is getting into challenging territory. I left this excerpt intact, including the numbers that reference footnotes in the original study (see this link https://www.amazon.com/Epistle-Hebrews-Kent-Collection/dp/0884690695):
Four views are current today regarding the relation of the church to the new covenant:
View 1. The church has replaced Israel as the participant in the new covenant. This is the viewpoint of amillennialists, who see the nation of Israel as permanently displaced and all the blessings promised to her now fulfilled by the church. Lenski is representative of this position as he writes concerning the mention of “the house of Israel” in Hebrews 8:8:
Right here we have the universality of the new testament. Lost among the Gentiles and turned Gentile, the gospel goes out to all nations to bring the new testament in Christ’s blood to all.80
Oswald T. Allis comments in the same vein regarding the new covenant:
The passage speaks of the new covenant. It declares that this new covenant has been already introduced and that by virtue of the fact that it is called “new” it has made the one which it is replacing “old,” and that the old is about to vanish away. It would be hard to find a clearer reference to the gospel age in the Old Testament than in these verses in Jeremiah.81
One accepts this view only to the extent that he is willing to interpret “the house of Israel and the house of Judah” as the Christian church in the present age.
View 2. The new covenant is with the nation of Israel only. This is one of several views suggested by various dispensational premillennialists. It interprets the words of Jeremiah literally and sees no warrant for inclusion of the New Testament church. J. N. Darby has written:
The first covenant was made with Israel; the second must be so likewise, according to the prophecy of Jeremiah.…We enjoy indeed all the essential privileges of the new covenant, its foundation being laid on God’s part in the blood of Christ, but we do so in spirit, not according to the letter. The new covenant will be established formally with Israel in the millennium. (J. N. Darby, Synopsis of the Books of the Bible, V, 329, 330.)
The two views above represent the extremes—one seeing the church exclusively in the new covenant, and the other seeing Israel only.
View 3. There are two new covenants, one with Israel and one with the New Testament Church. This explanation recognizes the demands of a strict grammatico-historico hermeneutic for the Jeremiah passage, and at the same time acknowledges that some of the New Testament passages cannot ignore the church’s relation to the new covenant. This view was expressed by Chafer as follows:
Reference at this point is to the new covenant yet to be made with Israel and not to the new covenant now in force in the Church.
There remains to be recognized a heavenly covenant for the heavenly people, which is also styled like the preceding one for Israel a “new covenant.” It is made in the blood of Christ (cf. Mark 14:24) and continues in effect throughout this age, whereas the new covenant made with Israel happens to be future in its application. To suppose that these two covenants—one for Israel and one for the Church—are the same is to assume that there is a latitude of common interest between God’s purpose for Israel and His purpose for the Church.83
Among others holding this view are C. C. Ryrie 84 and J. F. Walvoord. 85 J. D. Pentecost presents the position at some length, but does not indicate categorically his personal commitment.86 These three were all students of L. S. Chafer.
By this view one is required to differentiate among the New Testament references, those referring to the new covenant promised to Israel from those describing the new covenant with the church.
View 4. There is one new covenant to be fulfilled eschatologically with Israel, but participated in soteriologically by the church today. This view recognizes that Christ’s death provided the basis for instituting the new covenant, and also accepts the unconditional character of Jeremiah’s prophecy which leaves no room for Israel’s forfeiture. At the same time it also notes that the New Testament passages definitely relate New Testament Christians to this covenant. Perhaps the best-known representative of this position is the Scofield Reference Bible. At Hebrews 8:8 the following notes appear:
The New Covenant secures the personal revelation of the Lord to every believer (v. 11); … and secures the perpetuity, future conversion, and blessing of Israel. (C I Scofield)
The New Covenant rests upon the sacrifice of Christ, and secures the eternal blessedness, under the Abrahamic Covenant (Gal. 3:13–29), of all who believe. (C I Scofield)
Among the reasons supporting this interpretation are the following:
(a) The normal way of interpreting the several uses of the expression “the new covenant” is to refer them to one covenant, rather than to posit two distinct covenants with the same name (and apparently with the same or at least very similar contents).89
(b) The author is writing to Christians when he mentions the new covenant. It is granted that they are Jewish Christians, but the fact remains that they are Christians.
(c) To assign arbitrarily the references to the new covenant to Israel exclusively in some cases and to the New Testament church exclusively in other cases so as to imply the existence of two new covenants encounters difficulty at Hebrews 12:23, 24, where both the church (“church of the firstborn”) and Old Testament saints (“spirits of just men made perfect”) are related to the new covenant (not two covenants).
(d) Christ spoke of the new covenant in the upper room discourse (Luke 22:20), and the apostles who heard Him must certainly have thought in terms of Jeremiah 31. Yet they were being made ready for the church. Christ’s mention of the new covenant was a part of His institution of the bread and the cup, and this was understood by the apostles as intended for the church to perpetuate.
(e) The apostle Paul shows a clear connection between the new covenant and the church in his two uses of the term. In 1 Corinthians 11:25, he uses it in quoting our Lord’s upper room instruction, where the sense conveyed to the apostles must surely have been the concept in Jeremiah 31. At the same time Paul is urging the observance of this ordinance by the Gentile Christian church at Corinth. In 2 Corinthians 3:6 he calls himself and his associates “ministers of the new covenant.”
(f) Hebrews 8 argues that the title “new covenant” implies a corresponding “old covenant.” The Mosaic covenant is obviously the old covenant insofar as Israel’s relation to the new covenant is concerned. If the church has a totally separate new covenant, what is its “old covenant”?
All things considered, view 4 offers the least hermeneutical problems. It allows the new covenant as announced for Israel by Jeremiah to find its fulfilment with the nation when Christ returns. At the same time it recognizes that after the analogy of the Abrahamic covenant, in which present believers through their union with Christ (the “Seed” of Abraham, Gal. 3:16) enjoy God’s blessing as “Abraham’s seed” (Gal. 3:29) even though the Abrahamic covenant will not find its complete fulfillment until the millennium, so Christian believers depend for their blessing upon the blood of Christ which instituted the new covenant. Romans 11:17 ff. depicts the same truth as Gentile believers are described as grafted into the good olive tree (and at present the natural branches—Israel—are broken off). Yet the Jewish branches will someday be grafted back in (Rom. 11:24), and God’s new covenant will find its fulfilment as Jeremiah predicted.
Homer West (1926-2020) taught at Grace Theological Seminary in Indiana and wrote several studies of the New Testament. The author of Precept Austin appears to be a proponent of this fourth viewpoint, which seems logical to me. That last question in the excerpt from West’s book is the real ringer: If the Christian church has a totally separate covenant, what is its “old covenant”?
There are two more $10,000 words in this excerpt worth defining; these are the AI definitions in my search engine:
Eschatological refers to concepts related to eschatology, which is the study of the end of the world or the final events in human history, often found in religious contexts. It encompasses themes such as death, judgment, and the ultimate destiny of humanity.
Soteriological refers to the study of religious doctrines concerning salvation. It explores how different religions understand the concept of being saved or delivered from sin or suffering.
By the way, Precept Austin, in the link to Hebrews 8:7-9 has a lengthy list near the bottom of the commentary on many other New Covenant prophecies found in the OT.
Well, I hope heads aren’t exploding because mine is getting pretty full! Let’s look at more commentary for this passage. This is from Enduring Word discussing this passage (by the way, David Guzik has a statement of faith on his website, but it does not deep dive into the $10,000 words that we discovered above):
a. Finding fault: In this passage from Jeremiah 31, God shows that something was lacking in the Old Covenant – because a New Covenant was promised. In the days of Jeremiah the New Covenant was still in the future, because he wrote “Behold the days are coming.”
i. In its context, Jeremiah’s prophecy probably comes from the days of Josiah’s renewal of the covenant after finding the law (2 Kings 23:3). This renewal was good, but it wasn’t enough because Jeremiah looked forward to a new covenant.
b. I will make: The Lord made it clear that this covenant would originate with God, and not with man. At Sinai under the Old Covenant the key words were if you (Exodus 19:5), but in the New Covenant, the key words are I will.
c. A new covenant: This covenant is truly new, not merely “new and improved” in the way things are marketed to us today. Today, products are said to be “new and improved” when there is no substantial difference in the product. But when God says “new,” He means new.
i. There are two ancient Greek words that describe the concept of “new.” Neos described newness in regard to time. Something may be a copy of something old but if recently made, it can be called neos. The ancient Greek word kainos (the word used here) described something that is not only new in reference to time, but is truly new in its quality. It isn’t simply a new reproduction of something old.
d. With the house of Israel and the house of Judah: The New Covenant definitely began with Israel but it was never intended to end with Israel (Matthew 15:24 and Acts 1:8).
e. Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers: This covenant is not like the covenant God made with their fathers. Again, this emphasizes that there is something substantially different about the New Covenant.
f. Because they did not continue in My covenant: The weakness of the Old Covenant was not in the Covenant itself. It was in the weakness and inability of man. The reason the Old Covenant didn’t “work” was because they did not continue in My covenant.
g. I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts: The New Covenant features transformation from within, not regulation through external law.
i. The Old Covenant came in with such awe and terror that it should have made everyone obey out of fear. But they sinned against the Old Covenant almost immediately. The New Covenant works obedience through the law written in their mind and on their hearts.
h. I will be their God, and they shall be My people: The New Covenant also features a greater intimacy with God than what was available under the Old Covenant.
i. “The best way to make a man keep a law is to make him love the law-giver.” (Spurgeon)
i. Their sins and lawless deeds I will remember no more: The New Covenant offers a true, complete cleansing from sin, different and better than the mere “covering over” of sin in the Old Covenant.
3. (13) The significance of a New Covenant.
In that He says, “A new covenant,”He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
a. He has made the first obsolete: Now that the New Covenant has been inaugurated, the Old Covenant is thereby obsolete.
b. What is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away: The message was clear to these discouraged Christians from Jewish backgrounds, who thought of going back to a more Jewish faith. They simply can’t go back to an inferior covenant, which was ready to completely vanish away.
i. The system of sacrifice under the Law of Moses soon did vanish away with the coming destruction of the Temple and the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.
I think this is really good commentary. If you go to the link, Guzik also conveniently describes the differences between the covenants. Ah, shucks, that’s so good that I’m sharing it here as well (sorry for making this much longer than I intended):
Differences Between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant
1. They were instituted at different times.
· The Old Covenant around 1446 B.C.
· The New Covenant around 33 A.D.
2. They were instituted at different places.
· The Old Covenant at Mount Sinai
· The New Covenant at Mount Zion
3. They were spoken in different ways.
· The Old Covenant was thundered with fear and dread at Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:17-24)
· Jesus Christ, God the Son, declared the New Covenant with love and grace
4. They have different mediators.
· Moses mediated the Old Covenant
· Jesus is the mediator of the New Covenant
5. They are different in their subject matter.
· The Old Covenant demanded a covenant of works
· The New Covenant fulfills the covenant of works through the completed work of Jesus
6. They are different in how they were dedicated.
· The Old Covenant was dedicated with the blood of animals sprinkled on the people (Exodus 24:5-8)
· The New Covenant was dedicated with Jesus’ blood (signifying His sacrificial death) spiritually applied to His people
7. They are different in their priests.
· The Old Covenant is represented by the priesthood of the Law of Moses and high priests descended from Aaron
· The New Covenant has a priesthood of all believers and a High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek
8. They are different in their sacrifices.
· The Old Covenant demanded endless repetition of imperfect sacrifices
· The New Covenant provides a once and for all, perfect sacrifice of the Son of God Himself
9. They are different in how and where they were written.
· The Old Covenant was written by God on tablets of stone
· The New Covenant is written by God on the hearts of His people
10. They are different in their goals.
· The goal of the Old Covenant was to discover sin, to condemn it, and to set a “fence” around it
· The goal of the New Covenant is to declare the love, grace, and mercy of God, and to give repentance, remission of sin, and eternal life
11. They are different in their practical effect on living.
· The Old Covenant ends in bondage (through no fault of its own)
· The New Covenant provides true liberty
12. They are different in their giving of the Holy Spirit.
· Under the Old Covenant the Holy Spirit was given to certain people for certain specific duties
· Under the New Covenant the Holy Spirit is poured out freely on all who will receive Him by faith
13. They are different in their idea of the Kingdom of God.
· Under the Old Covenant, the Kingdom of God is mainly seen as the supreme rule of Israel over the nations
· Under the New Covenant, the Kingdom of God is both a present spiritual reality and a coming literal fact
14. They are different in their substance.
· The Old Covenant has vivid shadows
· The New Covenant has the reality
15. They are different in the extent of their administration.
· The Old Covenant was confined to the descendants of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob according to the flesh
· The New Covenant is extended to all nations and races under heaven
16. They are different in what they actually accomplish.
· The Old Covenant made nothing perfect
· The New Covenant can and will bring in the perfection of God’s people
17. They are different in their duration.
· The Old Covenant was designed to prepare the way for the New Covenant and then pass away as a principle of God’s dealing with men
· The New Covenant was designed to last forever
The New Covenant, in my understanding, does not in any way, shape or form exclude the modern-day people of Israel. But that story is for another study, like perhaps when I finally dig into the complete book of Romans (and Romans 11).
Well, that was interesting…my next devotional examines Hebrews 9:1-5 - The Old Covenant described.
Heaven on Wheels Daily Prayer:
Dear Lord - This was eye-opening today!! I see more and more how Your perfect will for your created humans began with the Old Covenant and became the basis of our faith we see in the New Covenant. Amen.
Credits and Citations:
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.Lockman.org.
Precept Austin was accessed on 12/21/2025 to review commentary for Hebrews 8:7-13:
Commentary from Enduring Word by David Guzik is used with written permission. ©1996-present The Enduring Word Bible Commentary by David Guzik – enduringword.com. Within the Enduring Word commentary:
Spurgeon, Charles Haddon The New Park Street Pulpit, Volumes 1-6and The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Volumes 7-63 (Pasadena, Texas: Pilgrim Publications, 1990)