Jeremiah 31:18-40 ▼

18 I have surely heard Ephraim grieving, ‘You have chastised me, and I was chastised, Like an untrained calf; Cause me to return that I may return, For You are Yahweh my God.

19 For after I turned away, I repented; And after I was instructed, I slapped my thigh; I was ashamed and also dishonored Because I bore the reproach of my youth.’

20 Is Ephraim My dear son? Is he a delightful child? Indeed, as often as I have spoken against him, I certainly still remember him; Therefore My inmost being yearns for him; I will surely have compassion on him,” declares Yahweh.

21 “Set up roadmarks for yourself, Place for yourself guideposts; Set your heart to the highway, The way by which you went. Return, O virgin of Israel, Return to these your cities.

22 How long will you go here and there, O faithless daughter? For Yahweh has created a new thing in the earth— A woman will encompass a man.”

23 Thus says Yahweh of hosts, the God of Israel, “Once again they will speak this word in the land of Judah and in its cities when I return their fortunes, ‘Yahweh bless you, O abode of righteousness, O holy hill!’

24 And Judah and all its cities will inhabit it together, the farmer and they who go about with flocks.

25 For I satisfy the weary soul and fill up every soul who wastes away.”

26 At this I awoke and looked, and my sleep was pleasant to me.

27 “Behold, days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “when I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and with the seed of beast.

28 And it will be that as I have watched over them to uproot, to tear down, to pull down, to destroy, and to bring calamity, so I will watch over them to build and to plant,” declares Yahweh.

29 “In those days they will not say again, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, And the children’s teeth are set on edge.’

30 But everyone will die for his own iniquity; each man who eats the sour grapes, his teeth will be set on edge.

31 “Behold, days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “when I will cut a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,

32 not like the covenant which I cut with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, but I was a husband to them,” declares Yahweh.

33 “But this is the covenant which I will cut with the house of Israel after those days,” declares Yahweh: “I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.

34 And they will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know Yahweh,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares Yahweh, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

35 Thus says Yahweh, Who gives the sun for light by day And the statutes for the moon and the stars for light by night, Who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar; Yahweh of hosts is His name:

36 “If these statutes are removed From before Me,” declares Yahweh, “Then the seed of Israel also will cease From being a nation before Me forever.”

37 Thus says Yahweh, “If the heavens above can be measured And the foundations of the earth searched out below, Then I will also reject all the seed of Israel For all that they have done,” declares Yahweh.

38 “Behold, days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “when the city will be rebuilt for Yahweh from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate.

39 The measuring line will go out farther, straight ahead to the hill Gareb; then it will turn to Goah.

40 And the whole valley of the dead bodies and of the ashes, and all the fields as far as the brook Kidron, to the corner of the Horse Gate toward the east, shall be holy to Yahweh; it will not be uprooted or pulled down anymore forever.”