Text: Jeremiah 31:31-32
OT Text Referred to: Exodus 24:8
Subject: the Sinai covenant Jeremiah 31:32 names as broken
Source: Gary Schnittjer, Old Testament Use of Old Testament; Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type: Allusion
Connection Method(s): Promise-Fulfillment + Contrast
Anchor Text: Jer 31:31-34 — The New Covenant
Significance: Jeremiah's new-covenant oracle is defined against a specific prior event: "not like the covenant I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant they broke" (Jer 31:32). That covenant is the one ratified at Exodus 24:8, where Moses sprinkled blood on the people and declared, "This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words" — the people having just sworn "All that the LORD has spoken we will do" (24:7). Jeremiah's not like clause makes the contrast explicit and structural: the Sinai covenant rested on Israel's pledged obedience and was ratified with the blood of bulls; it was broken. The new covenant will rest on God's unilateral action — law written on the heart, sins remembered no more — and (the NT will show) be ratified with the blood of the Mediator. This is genuine intra-canonical Contrast: same God, same people, but a covenant on a wholly different footing, with the locus of law moved from stone to heart and the agency from Israel's "we will do" to God's "I will." The connection is not merely negative: the very inadequacy of Sinai's blood drives the promise forward. Its telos is fulfilled when Jesus, at the Last Supper, takes up Exodus 24:8's "blood of the covenant" and Jeremiah 31:31's "new covenant" in one breath (Matt 26:28; Luke 22:20) — the better covenant whose blood actually secures the forgiveness and heart-obedience the first could only require, making Christ the desirable end of both.