posted 08-05-2000 03:47 PM            

The way I am seeing it is that the death of Yahushua was to pass on the promise that was given to Abraham. Abraham was promised that through his seed all nations shall be saved. I believe that the New or Renewed Covenant was ushered in at his death but is not fully realized at this time.
The covenant would have to be renewed because the Sinai covenant was to be a perpetual one. The difference is that this New Covenant would be internalized and written on our hearts instead of tablets of stone. Through the spirit of Yahweh we would be able to upheld that covenant agreement.
There would no longer be a Levitical priesthood, as Yahushua would serve as the High Priest. The old covenant with its animal sacrifices could not wash away the sin, this is one of the reasons why Yahushua had to die and shed his blood. This is what Hebrews was discussing.

posted 08-05-2000 05:09 PM            

This “new covenant,” missionaries argue, is the covenant of the cross that was fulfilled nearly 2,000 years ago when the blood of Jesus was shed for the sins of mankind. Moreover, Christians insist, this new covenant was prophesied in Jeremiah 31:31-34, which states,

“Behold, days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant (bris) with the House of Israel and with the House of Judah. Not like the covenant (bris) 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 hearts I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” says the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

This “new covenant,” missionaries maintain, is the New Testament which speaks of salvation by believing in the atoning death of Jesus as proclaimed in Matthew 26:28,

. . . for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

What of the Sinaitic covenant founded on the keeping of the Torah’s commandments? Commenting on Jeremiah 31:31, the author of the Book of Hebrews relegates the Torah’s life-giving commandments to obsolescence and concludes that,

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. (Hebrews 8:13)

It is exceedingly difficult, if not quite impossible, for us to form any adequate conception of the serious obstacles presented to the mind of a pious Jew, when any one sought to persuade him that Judaism had been set aside by God and that he must turn his own back upon it.1

In order to answer your question regarding Jeremiah’s prophecy of a “new covenant,” you must first understand how the New Testament has misapplied and altered Jeremiah 31:31-34, and then grasp the prophet’s message in these four well-known verses.

As mentioned above, missionaries argue that Jeremiah 31:31-34 is a prophecy of an event that occurred nearly 2,000 years ago with Jesus’ death on the cross. They insist that this is the new covenant that replaced the old and decaying Mosaic covenant made with Israel.

This Christian rendering of Jeremiah’s prophecy of a “new covenant,” however, is an extraordinary reconstruction of the prophet’s own words. Jeremiah 31:31-34 is not a prophecy that occurred 2,000 years ago, or any time in the past. Rather, it is a prophecy that will be fulfilled in the future messianic age.

The fact that Jeremiah 31:31-34 begins with the prophet addressing both the “House of Israel and the House of Judah” clearly indicates that Jeremiah is speaking to a restored and fully ingathered Jewish people. This, however, was not at all the case at the time when Christians claim the new covenant was fulfilled in Jesus’ death . . . quite the contrary. During the Christian century there was no House of Israel in existence because Assyria had exiled the Kingdom of Israel more than 700 years earlier (approx. 732 B.C.E.). Moreover, in the first century the Jewish people were spread throughout the Roman Empire and beyond. Thus, even the “House of Judah” was not all in the Promised Land during the Christian century.

In short, the era of the new covenant has not yet arrived. Rather, Jeremiah’s prophecy addresses a future messianic age when the entire Jewish people -- both Judah and Israel -- will be restored together in their rightful place, the land of Israel (Ezekiel 37:15-22). In contrast, there had been no time in history when the Jewish people were more fractured and dispersed than during the Christian century when, according to the author of Hebrews, Jeremiah’s prophecy of a new covenant was supposedly fulfilled.

Moreover, a cursory reading of verse 31:34 further confirms that Jeremiah’s prophecy is not speaking of a Christian cross 2,000 years ago but rather a restored Jewish people in the future messianic era. Missionaries often overlook verse 34 and emphasize only 31:31-33 when quoting Jeremiah’s declaration of a new covenant. This oversight has proved to be devastating to their understanding of this prophecy because verse 31:34 sheds much light on this new covenant era. Jeremiah 31:34 reads,

No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, “Know the Lord,” for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.

The above verse reveals that the age of the new covenant will be realized during an epoch of the universal knowledge of God. It will occur when no one will have to teach his neighbor about God, “for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them . . . .” Did this occur at the time of the Christian century nearly 2,000 years ago, or at any time since? Does every human being “know the Lord”? This is hardly the case. The church is spending many hundreds of millions of dollars annually in order to convert masses worldwide to Christianity. There are roughly one billion Moslems and Hindus in the world today who, according to Christian teachings, do not know the Lord; and there are an untold number of atheists throughout the globe who certainly do not know the Lord. Has Jeremiah’s prophecy of a “new covenant” yet been fulfilled by anyone’s standards? Are we living in a time when each and every person “knows the Lord”? Certainly not.

The Hebrew word bris (covenant) in Jeremiah 31:31 does not mean a Bible or refer to a new salvation program or Torah. The word bris always refers to a promise or a contract. This covenant was made with the Jewish people while they were still in the desert before they were brought into the Promised Land.

In the 28th and 29th chapters of Deuteronomy, Moses told the children of Israel that if they remained faithful to God in the land they were about to enter then the Almighty would bestow upon them manifold blessings and they would flourish in the Holy Land. On the other hand, if they backslid and turned away from the Lord, they would be driven out of Israel into a bitter exile in the land of their enemies. We are all familiar with the events that followed when the Jewish people broke their side of the covenant and they were sent into diaspora.

These four verses in Jeremiah 31:31-34 are part of an ongoing theme repeated throughout the Book of Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s unique literary motif is to contrast the redemption of the children of Israel from Egypt with their final redemption in the messianic age -- always vividly illustrating how the latter will far outshine the former. In Jeremiah 23:7-8, the prophet makes this clear when he proclaims,

Therefore, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when men shall no longer say, “As the Lord lives who brought up the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt,” but, “as the Lord lives who brought up and led the descendants of the house of Israel out of the north country and out of all the countries where He had driven them.” Then they shall dwell in their own land.

As was declared by every prophet, the covenant that God has with the Jewish people is eternal. No words in the Christian Bible or interpolation of the Jewish scriptures can ever change this eternal oath. The prophet Isaiah proclaimed this vow more than 2,700 years ago,

“With a little wrath I hid My face from you for a moment; but with everlasting kindness I will have mercy on you,” says the Lord, your Redeemer. “This is like the waters of Noah to Me; for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah would no longer cover the earth, so have I sworn that I would not be angry with you, nor rebuke you. The mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but My kindness shall not depart from you, nor shall My covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, Who has mercy on you. (Isaiah 54:8-10)

Moreover, in the next two verses the prophet determinedly proclaims this, pointing to the natural phenomena of the world as a witness to His eternal relationship with the children of Israel. Jeremiah 31:35-36 reads,

Thus says the Lord, Who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night, Who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar-- the Lord of hosts is His name: If this fixed order were ever to cease from My presence, says the Lord, then also the offspring of Israel would cease to be a nation before Me forever. Thus says the Lord: If the heavens above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth below can be explored, then I will reject all the offspring of Israel because of all they have done.

The Hebrew word “ba’altee,” means a “husband,” not “to disregard.” This is a stunning alteration of the words of Jeremiah; to be a “husband” is the precise opposite of “disregarding” someone. How can the author of Hebrews change the word of God in order to demonstrate the superiority of Christianity over its older rival Judaism? When New Testament authors wantonly tamper with the Jewish scriptures, do they not convey the very opposite message?

Furthermore, in contrast to the message of Hebrews 8:13, the life-giving commandments of the Torah have no expiration date. Moses declared that these commandments are forever and ever.

The secret things belong unto the Lord our God; but the things that are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. (Deuteronomy 29:28 [29:29])

The works of his hands are verity and judgment; all his commandments are sure. They stand fast forever and ever, and are done in truth and uprightness. (Psalm 111:7-8)

Moreover, the prophets foretold that the Jewish people will observe the commandments of the Torah after the messiah arrives. In fact, the Jewish scriptures prominently testify that the faithful observance of the Torah will be the emblematic feature of the messianic era.

And I shall give them one heart, and shall put a new spirit within them. And I shall take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances, and do them. Then they will be My people, and I shall be their God. (Ezekiel 11:19-20)

My servant David will be king over them, and they will all have one shepherd. They will follow my laws and be careful to keep my decrees. (Ezekiel 37:24)

And many peoples shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths,” for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. (Isaiah 2:3)

Paradoxically, Hebrew-Christians misguidedly point to Jeremiah’s new covenant to explain away their continued indifference to the commandments of the Torah, when in fact the central messianic prophecy in the Bible declares that the Children of Israel will diligently keep the commandments as a result of the coming of the messiah.

Finally, let’s consider which grievous sin the Jewish people committed that brought down the wrath of God upon them in the first place. In which iniquity did Israel indulge that brought about Jeremiah’s bitter reproach? The appalling sin of idolatry; they had violated the first of the Ten Commandments. The Jewish people worshiped gods that their fathers had not known. They indulged in idol worship and heathen practices of the surrounding gentile nations. Let us consider whether a pious Jew ever read the third chapter of Jeremiah and as a result was somehow moved to convert to Christianity.

More than 3,300 years ago the Torah warned the Jewish people that they would one day serve gods that their fathers didn’t know (Deuteronomy 28:36). When a Jew becomes a Hebrew-Christian, whether he then calls himself Messianic or Baptist, did this occur as a result of the teachings of his grandfather or great grandfather? Did he come to this theological conclusion by fervently studying the Torah in a yeshiva? Did he find the doctrine of the Trinity in the Book of Jeremiah, or by any other prophet in Tanach? This is certainly never the case. Hebrew-Christians learn and adopt their spiritual craft from the gentiles who evangelized them. Just as in the Bible.
http://www.outreachjudaism.org/jeremiah31.html

posted 08-06-2000 10:27 PM         

I just wanted to make one additional comment with regard to the Hebrew. The new JPS translation found in the 1999 JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh renders the phrase as "New Covenant". That's certainly not a "Christian" translation! Also all the Biblical Hebrew textbooks/Primers/Grammars I own give "new" as the meaning of "khadash". Finally, Ben Y'hudah's Hebrew-English English-Hebrew dictionary indicates that "khadash" means "new" or "fresh". From a purely grammatical viewpoint there is no doubt about the translation. That shifts the question from one of grammar to one of theology.

B'rakhot