Jeremiah 32:36

"And now therefore thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, concerning this city, whereof ye say, It is given into the hand of the king of Babylon, by the sword, and by the famine, and by the pestilence: Behold, I will gather them out of all the countries, whither I have driven them in mine anger, and in my wrath, and in great indignation; and I will bring them, again unto this place, and I will cause them to dwell safely. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God: and I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for the good of them, and of their children after them: and I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from following them, to do them good; and I will put my fear in their hearts, that they may not depart from me, Yea, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in the land assuredly with my whole heart, and with my whole soul. For thus saith Jehovah: Like as I have brought all this great evil upon this people, so will I bring upon them all the good that I have promised them. And fields shall be bought in this land, whereof ye say, It is desolate without man or beast; it is given into the hand of the Chaldeans. Men shall buy fields for money, and subscribe the deeds, and seal them, and call witnesses, in the land of Benjamin, and in the places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, and in the cities of the hill-country, and in the cities of the lowland, and in the cities of the South: for I will cause their captivity to return, saith Jehovah."

These are glorious promises; but, alas, it appears that Israel never did learn the secret of Jeremiah 18:7-10, in which the prophet revealed that all of God's promises, whether of evil, or of good, were subject, absolutely, to the condition of whether or not Israel would truly turn to the Lord and worship him. Most of the wonderful things God promised here never occurred at all.

As outlined in the Book of Micah, the priesthood promptly corrupted the worship in the second temple, provoking even the cancellation of the covenant of Levi; and God even cursed their blessings and expressed the desire that the temple would be closed (See Malachi 2:1-9).

Furthermore, as time went on, in those long centuries before Christ was born, the whole Jewish nation fell into apostasy again, resulting in their judicial hardening, along with the hardened nations of the Gentiles; and, according to Paul, the Jews became as reprobate as the Gentiles themselves. The name of God was blasphemed among the Gentiles because of the shameful conduct of the Jews (Romans 2:24). Their temple with its operators, the three false shepherds of Zechariah 11:8, namely the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Herodians was denominated as a "den of thieves and robbers" by the Christ himself; and the grand climax of Jewish wickedness came when they rejected the Messiah himself and manipulated his crucifixion by suborned testimony, political intimidation, and mob violence.

Therefore, history has recorded no fulfillment whatever of the prosperity of the post-exilic captives from Babylon. They deserved no prosperity, and they received none.

It is a shame that some commentators simply cannot get it out of their minds that God's promises to Israel were in some mysterious manner irrevocable and eternal. One may only wonder if they ever read Jeremiah 18:7-10, Note this from Feinberg. He identified the new covenant as a renewal of the old covenant, writing that, "The covenant bond between God and his people will be renewed, and they will walk in righteousness ... The covenant will never again be broken; the promise of restoration (Jeremiah 32:41) is just as certain as the prediction of punishments."[9]

Of course, that is what should have happened; but it didn't!

God's punishment of Israel for the rejection of Christ was executed within a generation after the event. The nation was brutally destroyed by Vespasian and Titus in A.D. 70; 1,100,000 people were executed, and Josephus even gives the names of the towns and villages supplying the totals for that incredible destruction; thirty thousand young men were crucified upon crosses adorning the walls of Jerusalem; their temple was destroyed never to be rebuilt, the whole Mosaic system of daily sacrifices, along with the institution of the priesthood and the high priest disappeared forever.

But what about that "covenant" mentioned in Jeremiah 32:40? As Cheyne said, "It is the New Covenant of Jeremiah 31 ."[10] Payne Smith, Albert Barnes, and many others concur in this identification of the covenant here as "The New Covenant of Jeremiah 31 ." In truth, the very fact of its being called an "everlasting covenant," along with the declaration that it shall never be broken, either on the part of God or on the part of his people, identifies it as the New Covenant; because that first covenant was indeed violated, not by God, but by his people. The notion that Racial Israel would never break the covenant (the old one) again is foreign to everything in the entire Bible. The prophecy here (in Jeremiah 32:40) that God's people will not again break his covenant has been fulfilled by the continuity of the Christian faith upon earth; and, "In these two conditions, that neither God nor his people shall break the New Covenant, lies the certainty of the eternal duration of that covenant."[11]

Then, what about those people on earth who do indeed violate the teachings of Christ? Nevertheless, the covenant is not broken as long as there are faithful souls in the world who cling to the truth of God and obey it. This prophecy here assures the continuity of that condition. The great improvement of this arrangement over the old covenant is at once evident. This means that there will be faithful Christians on earth till the end of time. Christ's question in Luke 18:8 does not deny this, but may indicate the scarcity of them at the time of the Second Coming.