The prophecy of the New Covenant, contained in these verses, may have been written in 586, when the destruction of Jerusalem had suggested that the Old Covenant was cancelled. The Jeremianic authorship of this most important passage has been firmly established by Cornill's arguments against the criticisms of Duhm and others. Yahweh is about to establish the national religion on a new basis. When He led the Israelites out of Egypt (Hosea 11:1-4), He made with them a covenant (that of Sinai, involving the Decalogue, written on tables of stone, Exodus 31:15; Deuteronomy 4:13), which they broke, though He was bound to them in marriage love. His new covenant He will write upon their hearts (instead of upon stone), and He will maintain (permanently) the bond between God and people (Jeremiah 31:33). The common knowledge of God (Jeremiah 22:16; Isaiah 54:13) resulting from this inward change will make the teaching of one by another to be unnecessary (i.e. the prophetic consciousness of a Jeremiah, with its direct relation to God, will become general); the barrier of (past) sin will be removed by an act of Divine forgiveness, to make this new covenant possible (Jeremiah 31:34). The primary truths of this great passage are to be grasped only in the light of the personal history and inner experiences of its writer. They are in general (a) the moral inwardness of true religion, (b) its dependence on supernatural agencies, (c) its realisation of a direct personal fellowship with God. (See further, Introduction, § 3.)
Jeremiah 31:32. although I was an husband unto them: cf. Jeremiah 3:14; but LXX, Syr. suggest that we should read and I abhorred them; cf. Jeremiah 14:19.
Jeremiah 31:33. Cf. Jeremiah 4:4; Jeremiah 24:7, and the dependent Isaiah 51:7; contrast Jeremiah 17:1. For the supernatural influences upon which this new and more individualised relation to God is conceived to rest, see Isaiah 59:21; Ezekiel 36:26 f.