Intertextuality Pair

Jeremiah 31:33 → Deuteronomy 30:6

Allusion

Later text

Jeremiah 31:33BSB

"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.

Earlier text

Deuteronomy 30:6BSB

The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, and you will love Him with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.

Significance

Deuteronomy 30:6 is the strongest OT antecedent to Jeremiah's law-on-the-heart promise: "The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, and you will love Him with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live." Moses promises a divine surgery — a heart God himself will circumcise — producing the wholehearted love the people have proven unable to render. Jeremiah 31:33 specifies the same interior transformation in covenant terms: "I will put My law in their minds and inscribe it on their hearts." Both texts locate the problem in the heart, both make God the sole agent of its renewal (the unilateral "I will"), and both promise the resulting obedience-from-love that the external Sinai code could not secure. Jeremiah advances the Deuteronomic promise by naming the arrangement a new covenant and the result as immediate knowledge of God and full forgiveness. The trajectory runs Deut 10:16 (command to circumcise the heart) → Deut 30:6 (promise that God will do it) → Jer 31:33 (the new covenant that accomplishes it) → its fulfillment in Christ by the Spirit (Rom 2:29). The significance terminates in the glory of a God who does not merely demand a circumcised heart but gives one — making love for God, the highest delight, his own gracious gift in the new covenant.

Found via
Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Reference Type
Allusion
Connection Method(s)
Promise-Fulfillment + Longitudinal Theme

▸ The New Covenant

Have a suggestion, or spotted something to fix?
✦ The Hyperlinked Bible