“‘Yet even in those days,’ declares the LORD, ‘I will not make you a complete destruction. It shall come about when they say, “Why has the LORD our God done all these things to us?” then you shall say to them, “As you have forsaken Me and served foreign gods in your land, so you will serve strangers in a land that is not yours”‘” (Jer 5:18-19).
How easily we can confuse Jeremiah’s oracles of wrath—delivered on separate occasions to Israel before the exile—with the hope-filled, eschatological message of the book’s final form for an exilic audience. Let me explain.
In Jeremiah 5, God threatens pre-exilic Israel with His instruments of wrath—an enemy from the north—who will destroy the land and scatter the people. The reason for God’s actions is given in Jeremiah 5:19, and it is nearly a direct citation of Deuteronomy 31:16: “The LORD said to Moses, ‘Behold, you are about to lie down with your fathers; and this people will arise and play the harlot with the strange gods of the land, into the midst of which they are going, and will forsake Me and break My covenant which I have made with them.’”
If Moses’ prophecy of covenant-breaking and exile has been fulfilled exactly as predicted, then his prophecies of regathering and the making of a new covenant must also be expected.
The purpose of this citation is obvious to the pre-exilic recipients of this oracle. By quoting it, Jeremiah accuses Israel of completely breaking the Sinai Covenant—something both Moses and Joshua said would happen (Deut 31:16–21; 32:1–43; Josh 24:20). It is unmistakably a message of judgment.
However, once this oracle (and many like it) is placed in the final form of the book and sent to those already in exile, the message of judgment is transformed into a message of hope. If Moses’ prophecy of covenant-breaking and exile has been fulfilled exactly as predicted, then his prophecies of regathering and the making of a new covenant must also be expected (see Deut 30:1–7; 32:43).
Reading the book of Jeremiah well means reading it as a message of hope—the fulfillment of Moses’ prophecy of a circumcised heart (see Deut 30:6), which Jeremiah identifies with God’s making of a completely new covenant:
“‘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'” (Jer 31:33).
