Jeremiah 31:31,32 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Behold, the days come, saith the Lord The latter days, or the times of the gospel, are here intended, as is evident from the apostle's applying the following promises to those times, and quoting this whole passage as a summary of the covenant of grace, Hebrews 8:8-10. I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah The benefits of this covenant were first offered to the Jews, as being the completion of that covenant which God had made with their fathers, Acts 3:26; Acts 13:46; but those benefits were actually conferred only on the spiritual seed of Abraham, or the imitators of Abraham's faith, the true Israel of God, on whom peace is and shall be, Galatians 6:16, and with whom only this new covenant is made. In other words, Israel and Judah stand here for the true people or church of God, especially the gospel church: and the covenant here promised to be made with them is said to be new, not because it was so as to the substance of it, for it was made with Abraham, Genesis 17:7, and with the Israelites, Deuteronomy 26:17-18; but, upon many other accounts, especially the following: 1st, It was new, considered as a testament, confirmed by the actual death of the testator, which did not take place till gospel times. 2d, It was revealed after a new manner, more fully and particularly, plainly and clearly. 3d, It contained no such mixture of temporal promises as when first made with the Jews. 4th, The ceremonial law was no part of it, as it was to the Jews, who were obliged to approve themselves God's people, by a strict observance thereof. 5th, The publication of it was extended to the Gentiles as well as the Jews, which was not the case with the Mosaic covenant. 6th, The influences of the Divine Spirit, attending the publication of it, are conferred more largely under this than under the old covenant, distributing to believers a greater measure and variety of gifts and graces, to enable them to comply with the terms, and fulfil the demands of it. Not according to the covenant made with their fathers Differing from it in the circumstances above mentioned, and in others declared afterward: in the day when I took them by the hand, &c. The covenant which God made with the Jews, when they came out of the land of Egypt, was on his part the law which he gave them from Sinai, with the promises annexed; on their part, (which made it a formal covenant,) their promise of obedience to it. This covenant God says he made with them when they were a weak and ignorant people, the care of whom he took upon himself, and led them as a parent leads his feeble child by the hand. Which my covenant they brake This covenant they are said to have broken, not because of every defect, or failure in their obedience, for in that sense, through the general depravity and weakness of human nature, they could not but break it; (see Romans 3:20; Galatians 3:10-11;) but because of their gross and wilful sins often repeated and continued in without repentance, and more especially by their idolatry, compared to whoredom, which broke the marriage covenant between God and them, and caused him to divorce them, and to say, Lo Ammi, You are not my people: Although I was a husband to them This their covenant-breaking was aggravated by God's kindness to them and care of them, who, as he stood, related to them in the character of a husband, so he had always manifested to them such love as is but faintly shadowed forth by that of the most affectionate husband to his wife, and had given them no temptation to go a whoring from him.