Hebrews Chapter Eight, A New Covenant

 

Hebrews 8:8b “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—[9] not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord.

 

This portion of Hebrews chapter 8, verses 8 through 12, is cited from Jeremiah 31:31-34. The writer uses this prophetic utterance to demonstrate that the seemingly novel thing he is addressing—finding fault with the old covenant because of the people—is not in fact anything new at all.

Jeremiah’s prophecy was given around the time of Jeconiah’s captivity; it was before Zedekiah’s reign and the fall of Jerusalem in toto, but already Babylon was sorely harassing Israel, which had at this point been reduced to a vassal state, serving Babylon’s king. Genuine autonomy had been lost with the death of Josiah and Pharaoh’s appointment of a ruler on Israel’s throne in the wake of his death. Now a brief succession of godless rulers would bring Jerusalem and Judah to utter ruin. And it is in the midst of this circumstance that Jeremiah is inspired to speak words of hope to the people.

 

Before reaching that passage, we open to chapter 30 and find the Lord telling Israel, “’For behold, the days are coming,’ says the Lord, ‘that I will bring back from captivity My people Israel and Judah,’ says the Lord. ‘And I will cause them to return to the land that I gave their fathers, and they shall possess it,’” Jeremiah 30:3. Jeremiah verse 7 relates the coming of the time of Jacob’s trouble, and that Jacob (Israel) shall be saved out of it. After this tribulation from which God will save them, they will serve the Lord and be ruled by David once more, who may act as a regent for the Christ, verse 9.

 

The Bible is a very Jewish book. It was primarily written by 40+ Jewish authors, and the focus of it is Jesus and His people. Israel is God’s focal point when the Gentile nations become involved. Jeremiah chapters 30 and 31 depict Judah awash in Gentile control, and the reconciliation God determined for them. Jeremiah 30:3 declares that God will restore Israel to his land, with no contingencies necessary on his part; it was entirely God declaring what He intended to do, and Israel being the recipient of God’s promises.

 

While the Christian may lay hold of Israel’s God, and may rejoice in what is written in Jeremiah 31:31-34, bear in mind that the prophet’s original audience was Jewry, torn between beings captives in a foreign land, and dying a miserable death in their own. The covenant had failed due to the weakness of the people, and what God foreswore would come upon them courtesy of Leviticus chapter 26 was coming to pass. Turmoil reigned, and circumstance painted the bleakest portrait for the Jewish mind. The aristocracy insulated itself from reality and condoned (or promoted) the false teachings of priests and prophets that soothed Israel’s worry with lies, Jeremiah 5:30, 31.

 

The prophecy then begins with a new covenant with Israel and Judah: neither of which are the Christian church or the Gentiles, no matter how much proponents of Anglo-Israeli religion want it to be so. The idea of the ten lost tribes being Anglo-Saxon, and later becoming Europe and America respectively is ludicrous and founded on anti-Semitic pride. First, there are no lost tribes. That suggests that God lost control of His pre-determined plan for Israel as a nation. That is preposterous. We know in Hezekiah’s day men from Asher, Manassaeh, and Zebulun attended the Passover, with Levi, Benjamin and Judah already present in the southern kingdom, 2 Chronicles 30:11.

 

Further along we find Anna the prophetess from the tribe of Asher, Luke 2:36. In Acts 4:36 we learn of Barnabas, of the tribe of Levi. The epistle of James states that the twelve (apparently not lost) tribes of Israel were, “scattered abroad,” James 1:1. They were part of what was termed the diaspora: or Jewish men and women living outside the pail of Israel after the Babylonian exile.

 

The prophet Ezekiel, when learning details about the thousand-year reign of Christ, foresaw the renewal of Israel, and every tribe that comprised it, restored to their land. In Ezekiel chapter 48 to be specific, we learn of the return of Dan (verse 2), Asher (3), Naphtali, (4) Levi (22), Benjamin (23), Simeon, (24), Issachar (25), Zebulun (26), etc. All of these are allocated lands around the sanctuary, or the Millennial temple, Ezekiel 48:8. John’s vision in Revelation agrees with this, for he sees the twelve tribes being sealed to bear the testimony of the Christ throughout the tribulation period, prior to the Thousand Years, Revelation 7:4-8.

 

Granted, Manasseh replaces Dan on this list (Revelation 7:6), but this hardly accounts for lost tribes. Revelation’s list occurs during the seven-year tribulation, or the time of Jacob’s trouble, and excludes Dan. The Millennial list of Ezekiel chapter 48 includes Dan (Ezekiel 48:2), in fact listing his tribe first among the twelve. Dan is not lost; no tribe is lost. Anglo-Israelism is an anachronism of anti-Semitism disguised as enlightened religion. It endeavors to pilfer God’s promises exclusively given to Israel, and will incur a just retribution.

 

The days are coming. It is future tense, but not indefinitely so. God the Holy Spirit deliberately includes Israel (indicative of the northern kingdom) and Judah, comprising the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. God references the covenant made after Israel was taken from Egypt: the Sinaitic covenant, symbolized by the tablets of stone, or the Decalogue that Moses carried down from the mountain. It is said God, Israel’s Father (see Jeremiah 31:9) will led His people by the hand as a parent leads their small child. This verse demonstrates God’s role of Heavenly Father in Israel, and the spiritually juvenile status of its people.

 

Frankly explaining the matter, God says of Israel that they did not continue in His covenant, and He disregarded them. This simple accusation encompasses a thousand years of Biblical history from Moses’ day to Malachi’s. The people forgot God almost at once and worshiped a pagan idol while Moses was away, committing fornication as part of the worship, invoking God’s wrath. They challenged the Lord at every turn, as Hebrews earlier records in chapters 3 and 4.

 

The congregation had earlier avowed, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do,” Exodus 19:8. In the course of a month and 10 days of Moses’ absence, the people profaned themselves in every conceivable way, committing rebellion and mutiny. In their wanderings they desired to return to slavery in Egypt rather than serve God who had saved them, Exodus 32:4, 6, Numbers 14:4. The fault in the covenant, the fault with the Law, was in the people, Jeremiah 7:23, 24. Fallible, sinful people cannot keep that which is entrusted to them. That is why the Holy Spirit says that it is sin to presume, or to promise, because we have no power to follow through and many times we likewise lack the will because the flesh is weak. Ergo, a new covenant was sought.