Hebrews 8:7-13 - Arthur Peake's Commentary on the Bible

The promises associated with the old covenant are described in the classical passage of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31-34), which is now quoted at length. But attention is first called to the fact that another covenant was found to be necessary. A place was sought for it i.e. God so modified His design as to bring it in because the original covenant had proved defective. In three points, as the quotation from Jer. shows, the new covenant was grander and more satisfying than that which it displaced. (a) It ensured that man's obedience to God should be a matter of inward choice, not merely of a law imposed from without. By their spontaneous obedience to God, men were to be recognised as indeed His children. (b) Their knowledge of God was to be immediate and personal, no longer dependent on what they had learned from others. (c) They were to receive the assurance that all their sins were forgiven. The covenant that carries with it these great promises is described in the prophetic passage as a new one (Hebrews 8:13). This implies that even in Jeremiah's day the first covenant could be regarded as old. It may be assumed, therefore, that in the interval which had elapsed since then it had faded altogether into a thing of the past.