Hebrews 8:8-9

‘For finding fault with them, he says, “Behold, the days come,” says the Lord, “That I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them forth out of the land of Egypt. For they continued not in my covenant, And I regarded them not,” says the Lord.’

‘For finding fault with them.’ That is with the people of the old covenant. They had been welcomed within His covenant but they had failed grievously. Far from obeying Him they had thrust aside His requirements and refused to listen to Him, and this in spite of the fact that He had ‘taken them by the hand’ so as to watch over them. Thus ‘finding fault’ was putting it mildly. He was disgusted with them and ashamed. Things had become such that He no longer regarded them.

‘Behold, the days come.’ But one day, Jeremiah had said, days would come when He would step in with a new covenant for the days ahead. One day He would act to implement this new covenant, and it would be unconditionally. And now at last ‘the coming days’ were here. These introductory words as used by the prophets looked ahead to the time when God would act in saving power, and now in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit He has so acted.

‘That I will make a new covenant.’ The old covenant had been on the basis of His deliverance of them from Egypt (Exodus 20:1-2). But it had failed because of the people’s obstinacy and disobedience. Thus they had not continued in the covenant. And that was why when they cried to Him in trouble He had not regarded them.

But now He would make with them a new covenant of a different type, not one where He stated His requirements and looked for them to obey, but one where He wrote His words in their hearts so that they would obey as a consequence of His activity, and in response to His Spirit. It would be a covenant divinely wrought in their hearts. He would work in them to will and to do of His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13). It would bring about the rise of the new Kingly Rule of God over all the people of God (the house of Israel and the house of Judah), and all God’s people would be united as one.

‘With the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.’ Compare Ezekiel 37:19-20; Ezekiel 37:22 where this idea is connected with the everlasting Kingdom (no thought of a Millennium there). It is the everlasting Kingdom, under the everlasting Prince (Ezekiel 37:24-25), in accordance with the everlasting covenant (Ezekiel 37:26), validated by the tabernacle (Ezekiel 37:27), which is an everlasting sanctuary (Ezekiel 37:28).

With regard to this we should note that the early church saw themselves, not as replacing Israel, or as being a kind of ‘spiritual Israel’, but as being the true Israel. They did not see themselves as taking the place of Israel but as being Israel itself. They entered Israel by submission to the God of Israel, as many had before them (Exodus 12:38; Exodus 12:48). They had been alienated, shut off, from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenant of promise (Ephesians 2:12). But now they had been made one with the true Israel, ‘made nigh in the blood of Christ’ (Ephesians 2:14). They were no longer strangers and sojourners, they were fellow-citizens with God’s holy people and of the household of God (see Ephesians 2:13-22; Galatians 3:29; Galatians 6:16).

Thus they could now be called ‘sojourners of the Dispersion’ (1 Peter 1:1), a technical description of the scattered people of God. Note in this regard that Peter never refers to Gentiles except as unbelievers. To him Gentiles are ‘the opposition’. And they are thus seen as in contrast with those he is writing to, that is, with believing Jews and Gentiles united as one in Christ.

They can also be called ‘the twelve tribes of the Dispersion’ (James 1:1). Note again in this regard that James nowhere refers to Gentile Christians even though he is dealing with behaviour towards others, thus he clearly sees them as included in this introduction. It is impossible to believe that James was so insulated against Gentile Christians that, if he was writing to believing Jews, he would not refer to how his believing fellow-countrymen should behave towards their fellow-believers in a letter with such an emphasis on behaviour, when it would have been a crucial question for believing Jews living in a Gentile world. The only acceptable explanation is that he saw both believing Jews and Gentiles as included in his description of those he was writing to. John also would later describe the whole church in terms of the twelve tribes of Israel (Revelation 7:3-8).

So the church saw themselves as inheritors of the promises, as true sons of Abraham (Galatians 3:29). As Paul had told them, ex-Gentile believers had been grafted in to the olive tree, and the unbelieving in Israel had been cut off (Romans 11:15-24).

This fact is exceedingly important in interpreting the Old Testament. We do not ‘spiritualise’ the promises to Israel, we simply recognise that they apply to the new Israel as it now literally continued in the church. It is true that the detail is not always literally carried out, for the prophets had to speak in illustrations and parables, in copies and shadows, about what they did not fully understand, just as Moses had had to before them. They spoke in earthly terms of heavenly realities, exactly as God represented it to them and as He had represented it to Moses in the Mount. They revealed ideas which were a copy and shadow of the true. The New Testament reveals this quite clearly here and elsewhere, and points to the realities indicated by these copies and shadows. The old tabernacle is pointing to the new tabernacle in Heaven (Hebrews 8:2). The old Temple is pointing to the new Temple, the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:9-16; Ephesians 2:20-22 compare Revelation 3:12), and again to the heavenly Temple described constantly in Revelation. The old Jerusalem is pointing to, and is replaced by, the new, real, heavenly Jerusalem (Hebrews 12:12; Galatians 4:25-26), the real as opposed to the shadow. The old idea of the ‘everlasting kingdom’ is subsumed into the ‘Kingly Rule of God’. The old has gone, the new has come. The importance of earthly Jerusalem is no more. It is the Jerusalem above which will see fulfilled all God’s promises concerning Jerusalem that have not yet been fulfilled. To cling to the old Israel, and the old Jerusalem, and the old Temple, and the old sacrifices, is to cling to a past that is no more.

Thus they would see these promises as completely fulfilled in themselves. The writer may well have seen the two parts described (Israel and Judah) as referring to believing Jews (for ‘Jews’ were yehuthi, those of Judah) and believing Gentiles (the new Israel, the Israel of God - Galatians 6:16) as being united in one (Ephesians 2:12-22), but however that may be he is emphasising that none of all the people of God were excluded. (That this description does not refer to some later application of the covenant yet to come is brought out by the fact that there is even now no separation between Israel and Judah among the Jews, and never genuinely can be again).

This is the new covenant which was in Jesus’ mind at the Last Supper when He spoke of the cup as ‘the new covenant in my blood’ (1 Corinthians 11:25; Luke 22:20) which was poured out for us. For the new covenant was sealed by the shedding of His blood which made it possible. And it embraced both Jews and Gentiles in the Israel of God.

‘New (kainos).’ New and of a different kind.

‘Says the Lord.’ This is repeated three times in the passage stressing the complete nature of the covenant. It also stresses God’s complete sovereign status with regard to the covenant. While the people will have a responsive part in it, it will be God initiated, and God fulfilled. It is of His will, and not theirs.