Intertextuality Pair

Jeremiah 31:31-34 → Isaiah 55:3

Echo

Later text

Jeremiah 31:31-34BSB

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. It will not be 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, though I was a husband to them," declares the LORD. "But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD. I will put My law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they will be My people. No longer will each man teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' because they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquities and will remember their sins no more."

Earlier text

Isaiah 55:3BSB

Incline your ear and come to Me; listen, so that your soul may live. I will make with you an everlasting covenant—My loving devotion promised to David.

Significance

Both oracles are eschatological covenant-promises voiced into the ruin of the monarchy, and both pivot on the same divine self-commitment: Isaiah's "I will make with you an everlasting covenant — My loving devotion promised to David" (bᵉrît ʿôlām, with the ḥasdê dāwid of 2 Sam 7 now democratized to all who "incline the ear and come," Isa 55:3) stands beside Jeremiah's "I will make a new covenant" (bᵉrît ḥădāšâ, Jer 31:31). Read as original meaning, Isaiah extends the sure mercies sworn to David to the whole listening remnant, while Jeremiah specifies the coming arrangement's distinctive form — law inscribed on the heart, immediate knowledge of God, and sins remembered no more. The link between them is genuine but light: there is no verbal dependence (Isaiah's accent is Davidic ḥesed, Jeremiah's is heart-Torah and forgiveness; the term "new" is Jeremiah's coinage alone), and neither prophet fulfills the other — so this is honestly an Echo, not a quotation or allusion, and a Longitudinal Theme parallel rather than typology (no type-antitype structure is in view) or promise-fulfillment between the two. What unites them is the one canon-wide Covenant thread: the everlasting-covenant corpus (Isa 54:10; 55:3; 59:21 alongside Jer 31:31-34 and Jer 32:40's explicit bᵉrît ʿôlām) by which God pledges an irrevocable, unilaterally-secured bond with His people. The two streams are deliberately fused only later, in Christ — Hebrews 13:20 blesses by "the blood of the eternal covenant" (Isaiah's aiōnios / Jeremiah's kainē welded into one), and Paul anchors Israel's future ingathering in the forgiveness clause (Rom 11:27). The telos: Isaiah's invitation is not "buy" but "come… without money," "that your soul may live" and "delight in the richest of foods" (55:1-3) — the everlasting covenant is offered as the satisfaction of the soul, and Jeremiah's heart-inscribed knowledge of God is what that satisfaction tastes like. Both oracles converge on Christ as the One in whom the soul finally feeds and lives — not merely a covenant foreshadowed, but the Beloved in whom the sure mercies become ours to savor forever.

Found via
Anchor-Text Network (Jeremiah 31:31-34 — The New Covenant)
Reference Type
Echo
Connection Method(s)
Longitudinal Theme (Covenant)

▸ The New Covenant

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