About 600 years before Jesus (Yeshua יֵשׁוּעַ), the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah (יִרְמְיָ֖הוּ) said there would be a New Covenant:

31:31. "Behold, the days are coming," says the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah"

Then he said it would be a different kind of covenant:

32. "not like the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them," says the Lord.

This agrees with what Moses himself had said would happen, in Deuteronomy (Devarim דְּבָרִים):

29:25. Then the nations will say, "It is because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord God of their fathers, which He made with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt"

But then Moses said,

30:6. the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul...

So it seems the Children of Israel broke the earlier covenant because their hearts were not right. This is the basic problem of all humanity, not Israel only.

Going back to Jeremiah, if our hearts are the problem, how will this new kind of covenant make things any better? Verses 33 and 34 say,

31:33. "But this is the covenant that I will make with the House of Israel after those days," says the Lord: "I will put My instruction in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people."

34. ...For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."

So participating in this New Covenant includes accepting forgiveness of our sin, and allowing the circumcision of our hearts, on which the Lord will write His ways, so they become our delight and our desire!  He changes us, from the inside out.

As a loving God and father, He has already accomplished all that is required, by entering into our time and space in human form, the Jewish man Yeshua. Is anything too difficult for the Lord? (Genesis 18:14). Having been created with free will, we also have a part to play. We can be open to asking for the gift of faith (emunah אֱמוּנָה). It's His free gift, but also our ongoing response. Then His Holy Spirit (Ruakh haKodesh רוּחַ הַקֹּדֶשׁ) comes to live in us, to be our help and to guide us into all truth.

Back to index

The Lord said much the same through the Hebrew kohen and prophet Ezekiel (יְחֶזְקֵאל):
36:26 "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will guard My judgments, and do them."