The Book of Comfort: Restoration and the New Covenant (part 2)
Jeremiah 31:21-40
21Set up signposts for yourself; set up signposts for yourself; set your heart toward the highway, the way you went. Return, O virgin Israel; return to these your cities.22How long will you continue turning away, O backsliding daughter? For the LORD has created a new thing in the land: a female will encompass a man.23Thus says the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel: They shall yet say this word in the land of Judah and in its cities when I restore their captivity: May the LORD bless you, O pasture of righteousness, O holy mountain.24Judah and all its cities shall dwell there together, along with farmers, and they shall go out with the flock.25For I have satisfied the weary soul, and every languishing soul I have filled.26At this I awoke and looked around, and my sleep was pleasant to me.27Behold, days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and the seed of beast.28And it shall come to pass that just as I watched over them to uproot and to tear down and to overthrow and to cause to perish and to do harm, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, declares the LORD.29In those days they shall no longer say, 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.'30Rather, each one shall die for his own iniquity; every person who eats sour grapes, his own teeth shall be set on edge.31Behold, days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.32It will not be like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, a covenant they broke, though I was a husband to them, declares the LORD.33For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my instruction within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.34And no longer shall each man teach his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.35Thus says the LORD, who gives the sun for light by day and the statutes 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.36If this fixed order departs from before me, declares the LORD, then the offspring of Israel shall also cease from being a nation before me all the days.37Thus says the LORD: If the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth beneath can be explored, then I also will reject all the offspring of Israel for all that they have done, declares the LORD.38Behold, days are coming, declares the LORD, when the city shall be rebuilt for the LORD from the tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate.39And the measuring line shall yet go out straight before it to the hill of Gareb and shall then turn to Goah.40And the whole valley of dead bodies and ashes, and all the fields as far as the brook Kidron, to the corner of the Horse Gate on the east, shall be holy to the LORD; it shall never again be uprooted or overthrown.