Later text
Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep,
Intertextuality Pair
Allusion
Later text
Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep,
Earlier text
Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.
The closing benediction of Hebrews invokes "the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep" (Heb 13:20). The phrase "blood of the eternal covenant" (diathēkēs aiōniou) is a composite allusion: it fuses Jeremiah's new covenant (the covenant ratified by Christ's blood, the burden of Hebrews 8-10) with the everlasting covenant language of Isaiah 55:3 and Jeremiah 32:40 (LXX 39:40, bĕrît ʿôlām) and the "blood of the covenant" of Exodus 24:8 / Zechariah 9:11. The benediction caps the epistle's sustained new-covenant argument: the same blood that inaugurated the covenant (8:8-12, 9:15) is now the ground of the resurrection itself. Because the covenant is eternal, the Shepherd it raised cannot die again, and his flock is secured forever. The forgiveness Jeremiah 31:34 promised is undergirded by an irrevocable, blood-sealed arrangement. The verse's telos is pastoral comfort and worship: the believer rests in a covenant that cannot lapse because its Mediator lives, the risen Shepherd whose covenant blood makes peace with God a permanent, delightful possession.