Jeremiah 31: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

The LORD promises to bring the scattered people of Israel and Judah back from exile, rebuild them, and turn their mourning into joy, including the blind, the lame, and women in labor. Rachel, weeping for her lost children, is told her children will come back from the enemy's land, and Ephraim's grief over his own sin is met with mercy. The LORD says the days are coming when he will make a new covenant, not like the one made at the exodus, writing his law on their hearts, so that all will know him and their sins will be forgiven. The chapter closes with promises tied to the fixed order of sun, moon and stars, and to the rebuilding of the city out to its edges.

Claim by Claim

1. 31:1
   • At that time the LORD will be the God of all the families of Israel
   • The families of Israel will be the LORD's people
   • This is declared by the LORD
2. 31:2
   • The LORD says the following
   • The people who survived the sword found favor in the wilderness
   • Israel went to find rest, or the LORD went to give Israel rest
3. 31:3
   • The LORD appeared to the speaker from far off, or long ago
   • The LORD says he has loved the addressee with an everlasting love
   • Therefore the LORD has drawn the addressee with steadfast love
4. 31:4
   • The LORD will build the virgin of Israel again
   • The virgin of Israel will be rebuilt
   • The addressee is called the virgin of Israel
   • She will again take up her tambourines
   • She will go out in the dance of those who make merry
5. 31:5
   • She will again plant vineyards on the hills of Samaria
   • Planters will plant
   • The planters will enjoy the fruit as ordinary use
6. 31:6
   • There will be a day when watchmen on the hill country of Ephraim will call out
   • The watchmen will say, Arise, and let us go up to Zion
   • The watchmen will call to go up to the LORD our God
7. 31:7
   • The LORD says the following
   • Sing with gladness for Jacob
   • Shout for the chief of the nations
   • Proclaim, praise, and say
   • The words to say are, O LORD, save your people, the remnant of Israel
8. 31:8
   • The LORD will bring them from the land of the north
   • The LORD will gather them from the farthest parts of the earth
   • Among them will be the blind and the lame
   • Among them will be the pregnant woman and the woman in labor together
   • A great assembly will return there
9. 31:9
   • They will come with weeping
   • The LORD will lead them with supplications
   • The LORD will make them walk by streams of water
   • The LORD will lead them on a straight path
   • They will not stumble on that path
   • The LORD is a father to Israel
   • Ephraim is the LORD's firstborn
10. 31:10
    • The nations are told to hear the word of the LORD
    • They are told to declare it in the distant coastlands
    • They are told to say the following
    • The one who scattered Israel will gather him
    • He will keep him as a shepherd keeps his flock
11. 31:11
    • The LORD has ransomed Jacob
    • The LORD has redeemed him from a hand stronger than his
12. 31:12
    • They will come and sing on the height of Zion
    • They will stream to the goodness of the LORD
    • The goodness includes grain
    • The goodness includes new wine
    • The goodness includes oil
    • The goodness includes the young of the flock and the herd
    • Their soul will be like a watered garden
    • They will not languish any more
13. 31:13
    • Then the virgin will rejoice in the dance
    • Young men and old men will rejoice together
    • The LORD will turn their mourning into gladness
    • The LORD will comfort them
    • The LORD will make them rejoice instead of their sorrow
14. 31:14
    • The LORD will saturate the soul of the priests with fatness
    • The LORD's people will be satisfied with his goodness
    • This is declared by the LORD
15. 31:15
    • The LORD says the following
    • A voice is heard in Ramah
    • The voice is lamentation and bitter weeping
    • Rachel is weeping for her children
    • Rachel refuses to be comforted for her children
    • The reason is that they are not
16. 31:16
    • The LORD says the following
    • The addressee is told to keep her voice from weeping
    • The addressee is told to keep her eyes from tears
    • There is a reward for her work
    • This is declared by the LORD
    • They will return from the land of the enemy
17. 31:17
    • There is hope for the addressee's future
    • This is declared by the LORD
    • The children will return to their own territory
18. 31:18
    • The LORD has surely heard Ephraim lamenting himself
    • Ephraim says the LORD chastised him
    • Ephraim says he was chastised
    • Ephraim says he was like an untrained calf
    • Ephraim asks to be turned back
    • Ephraim says he will then return
    • Ephraim says the LORD is his God
19. 31:19
    • After turning back, the speaker repented
    • After being made to know, the speaker struck his thigh
    • The speaker was ashamed
    • The speaker was also humiliated
    • The reason is that he bore the reproach of his youth
20. 31:20
    • It is asked whether Ephraim is a dear son to the LORD
    • It is asked whether he is a child of delight
    • As often as the LORD speaks against him, the LORD still remembers him
    • Therefore the LORD's inward parts yearn for him
    • The LORD will surely have compassion on him
    • This is declared by the LORD
21. 31:21
    • The addressee is told to set up waymarks for herself
    • The addressee is told to set up signposts for herself
    • The addressee is told to set her heart toward the highway
    • The highway is the way she went
    • The virgin of Israel is told to return
    • She is told to return to these her cities
22. 31:22
    • It is asked how long the addressee will wander
    • The addressee is called the backsliding daughter
    • The LORD has created a new thing in the earth
    • A female will encompass a man
23. 31:23
    • The LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, says the following
    • They will again say this word in the land of Judah and in its cities
    • This will happen when the LORD restores their fortunes
    • The word is, May the LORD bless you, dwelling of righteousness, holy mountain
24. 31:24
    • Judah and all its cities will dwell together in it
    • Farmers will dwell there
    • Those who move about with the flock will dwell there
25. 31:25
    • The LORD has saturated the weary soul
    • The LORD has filled every languishing soul
26. 31:26
    • The speaker awoke at this and looked
    • The speaker's sleep had been pleasant to him
27. 31:27
    • Days are coming, declares the LORD
    • The LORD will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah
    • The sowing will be with the seed of man and the seed of beast
28. 31:28
    • Just as the LORD watched over them to pluck up
    • Just as he watched over them to break down
    • Just as he watched over them to throw down
    • Just as he watched over them to destroy
    • Just as he watched over them to bring harm
    • So he will watch over them to build and to plant
    • This is declared by the LORD
29. 31:29
    • In those days they will no longer say a certain saying
    • The saying is that the fathers have eaten a sour grape and the children's teeth are set on edge
30. 31:30
    • Instead each man will die for his own iniquity
    • Every man who eats the sour grape will have his own teeth set on edge
31. 31:31
    • Days are coming, declares the LORD
    • The LORD will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah
32. 31:32
    • The new covenant will not be like the covenant the LORD made with their fathers
    • That covenant was made on the day the LORD took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt
    • They broke that covenant of his
    • The LORD was a husband, or master, to them
    • This is declared by the LORD
33. 31:33
    • This is the covenant the LORD will make with the house of Israel after those days
    • This is declared by the LORD
    • The LORD will put his law within them
    • The LORD will write it on their heart
    • The LORD will be their God
    • They will be his people
34. 31:34
    • They will no longer teach one another, each his neighbor and each his brother, saying, Know the LORD
    • They will all know the LORD, from the least of them to the greatest of them
    • This is declared by the LORD
    • The LORD will forgive their iniquity
    • The LORD will remember their sin no more
35. 31:35
    • The LORD says the following
    • The LORD gives the sun for light by day
    • The LORD gives the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night
    • The LORD stirs up the sea so its waves roar
    • The LORD of hosts is his name
36. 31:36
    • If those fixed orders depart from before the LORD, then the seed of Israel would also cease from being a nation before him forever
    • This is declared by the LORD
37. 31:37
    • The LORD says the following
    • If the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth below searched out, then the LORD would also reject all the seed of Israel
    • The rejection would be for all that they have done
    • This is declared by the LORD
38. 31:38
    • Days are coming, declares the LORD
    • The city will be built for the LORD
    • The building will extend from the tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate
39. 31:39
    • The measuring line will go out farther straight ahead onto the hill of Gareb
    • The line will turn around toward Goah
40. 31:40
    • The whole valley of the dead bodies and the ashes will be holy to the LORD
    • All the fields as far as the brook Kidron will be holy to the LORD
    • The area extends to the corner of the Horse Gate toward the east
    • It will not be plucked up again forever
    • It will not be thrown down again forever

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

31:1

"Family groups" translates a Hebrew word for clans, the extended kinship units that made up the tribes. Saying *all* of them is pointed: Israel had split into two kingdoms centuries earlier, the northern one (Israel) destroyed by Assyria and the southern one (Judah) facing Babylon. Chapters 30–31 speak of both being gathered back.

31:2

"Survived the sword" means survived war. The verse is deliberately double-edged: the wilderness is the desert Israel crossed after leaving Egypt, so it looks back to that founding journey, and at the same time it describes the exiles of Jeremiah's own day, who would come home by the same kind of route.

31:3

The Hebrew phrase behind "long ago" literally means "from far off," which can mean either from a great distance or from long in the past; translators split over it. "Faithful love" translates *hesed*, loyalty owed within a committed relationship, the steady dependability of someone who keeps their word, not warm feeling.

31:4

Cities and nations were routinely personified in Hebrew poetry as a young woman: "virgin Israel" pictures the nation as an unmarried daughter, and carries no comment on the morals of individuals. Tambourines, small hand-drums, were played by women leading victory songs and processions after a battle or a rescue.

31:5

Samaria was the capital and heartland of the northern kingdom, wiped out by Assyria about a century before Jeremiah. Its hills were prime vineyard country. "The farmers will eat the fruit themselves" points to a specific hardship being reversed: Israelite law kept a new vineyard's fruit off-limits for its first years, and invading armies routinely ate crops the planter never tasted.

31:6

Ephraim was the largest tribe of the northern kingdom, and its name is often used for that whole kingdom. Lookouts stood on high ground to spot danger; here they call out an announcement instead. Northerners heading to Zion, the ridge in Jerusalem where the temple stood, is striking because the northern kingdom had kept its own rival shrines rather than worship in Jerusalem.

31:7

"The greatest of the nations" is ambiguous in Hebrew: it may mean "shout among the leading nations," i.e. broadcast the news to them, or "shout on behalf of Jacob, the foremost of nations." "The ones left of Israel" is the remnant, the survivors of war and deportation, a standing term in the prophets for the fraction of a people left after catastrophe.

31:8

"The country in the north" means Assyria and Babylon. They actually lay east of Judah, but the desert was impassable, so armies and columns of deportees always traveled the arc of farmland to the north. Listing the blind, the lame and women in labor makes the point that nobody is left behind, these are exactly the people a long march would normally lose.

31:9

The firstborn son held a legal rank, not just a birth order: he was chief heir, received a double share of the estate, and represented the family. Calling Ephraim, the northern kingdom, the firstborn assigns that standing to the very people who had been destroyed and scattered.

31:10

"The isles afar off" means the distant coastlands, the far edge of the known world for people living around the Mediterranean.

31:11

Two commercial words. "Paid the price to set free" and "bought back" both come from Israelite family law, where a relative was obliged to buy back a kinsman who had fallen into debt-slavery, or land the family had lost. The picture is a next-of-kin paying out to recover his own.

31:12

Grain, new wine and olive oil are the standard trio for the whole harvest of the land, bread, drink and cooking-and-lamp oil. "New wine" is the freshly pressed juice of the year's crop. The heights of Zion are the temple ridge in Jerusalem, uphill from every direction, which is why worshipers always "go up" to it.

31:13

The "virgin" here simply means the young unmarried women, paired with young men and old men so that the celebration covers everybody.

31:14

Priests had no farmland of their own. They lived on assigned portions of what people brought to the sanctuary, so "filled with rich food" describes their income as much as their meals; the fat parts were the choicest cut. When the country was ruined, the priests went hungry with everyone else.

31:15

Ramah was a town about five miles north of Jerusalem; Babylonian forces used it as the collection point where captives were assembled before the march into exile. Rachel was Jacob's favorite wife and the mother of Joseph and Benjamin, making her the ancestress of the northern tribes and of Benjamin, so she is pictured weeping over the descendants being led away past her grave.

31:16

"Thy work shall be rewarded" uses reward in its older sense of wages paid for labor done, not a prize won.

31:18

A yoke is the wooden beam harnessing an animal to a plow; an untrained calf fights it and gets handled roughly until it learns. The Hebrew plays on one verb throughout: the same word means "turn back," "come home from exile," and "turn away from wrongdoing," so the plea to be turned carries all three senses at once.

31:19

Striking the thigh was a recognized gesture of grief and self-reproach, in the same family as beating the breast or slapping the forehead. "My face burned" renders a word for public humiliation, shame before other people, not a private feeling.

31:20

The Hebrew locates strong emotion in the internal organs (the older English versions say "my bowels are troubled") where modern English uses the heart or the gut. The verb suggests churning or growling inside.

31:21

Road markers were cairns, piles of stones set beside a route so it could be found again. The instruction is practical: mark the road as you are dragged along it into exile, because you will be walking back down it.

31:22

This last line is one of the most obscure sentences in the book, and translators have never agreed. The Hebrew says a female will "go around" or "encircle" a male, possibly protect, possibly court or take the initiative toward, possibly simply surround. The plain rendering keeps the ambiguity rather than choosing.

31:23

"LORD of Armies" translates "LORD of hosts," a title picturing God commanding massed forces, armies, or the ranked stars and heavenly beings. "Bring them back from captivity" renders a phrase that can mean either "return the captives" or, more broadly, "restore their fortunes"; both senses are live here. The blessing quoted is the kind of greeting travelers called out to a place or its people.

31:24

"Husbandmen" is the King James word for farmers and has nothing to do with husbands. Settled farmers and herders who move with their flocks sharing the same land peacefully is a picture of a country safe enough for both ways of life.

31:26

An abrupt first-person aside, apparently the prophet's own, and the text never explains it. It implies the preceding message came in a dream or vision during sleep, unusual for Jeremiah, who elsewhere is sharply critical of prophets who trade in dreams.

31:27

War and deportation had emptied the fields of people and livestock alike. The image reverses that: God sows the land with humans and animals the way a farmer sows seed.

31:29

A proverb in circulation among the exiles, quoted and rejected here and also in Ezekiel 18. "Teeth set on edge" is the grating, blunted feeling unripe fruit leaves in the mouth. The saying complained that one generation was suffering for what an earlier generation did.

31:31

"Agreement" translates *covenant*: a formal, binding relationship sealed with oaths and carrying stated obligations on both sides, closer to a treaty between a king and his subjects than to a private contract. Israel's national life was framed by the covenant made at Sinai after the escape from Egypt.

31:32

"I was a husband to them" follows the Hebrew text; the verb can also mean "I was master over them." The ancient Greek translation, followed by the quotation of this passage in Hebrews 8, reads a similar-looking Hebrew word and gets "so I turned away from them" instead. Both readings are ancient.

31:33

"Law" translates *torah*, which covers instruction and teaching generally, not only statutes. "Inside them" is literally "in their inward parts", the interior of the body, where Hebrew locates thought and will; the pairing with "hearts" contrasts something internal with laws carved on stone tablets or written on a scroll.

31:34

When the Bible speaks of God remembering or not remembering something, it means acting or not acting on it, rather than describing the state of his memory. "I will remember their sin no more" is a promise not to hold it against them.

31:35

The verb rendered "stirs up" is disputed: the same Hebrew root can mean to churn the sea into a storm or to still it, and the older English versions read it as "divides," hearing an echo of the sea splitting at the exodus. The argument of the verse is about fixed, observable regularity, sunrise, moon phases, the sea's behavior.

31:37

People pictured the earth sitting on deep foundations, like the bottom of a house. Nobody could dig down that far or measure the sky.

31:38

The tower of Hananel and the Corner Gate were landmarks at the northern edge of Jerusalem's wall. A measuring line is a surveyor's cord; running it out marks the boundary of the rebuilt city, so this and the next two verses trace a perimeter.

31:39

Gareb and Goah appear nowhere else and their locations are unknown; from the sweep of the description they were probably west and south of the city.

31:40

The valley of dead bodies and ashes is almost certainly the Hinnom valley on the south side of Jerusalem, the city dump, where refuse and the greasy ash from the altar were thrown, and where children had been sacrificed in earlier reigns. The Kidron valley runs along the east side. Declaring this ground holy takes in the most defiled land around the city.