The Hyperlinked Bible
Intertextuality Pair
Allusion
Later text
They will be My people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, so that they will always fear Me for their own good and for the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them: I will never turn away from doing good to them, and I will put My fear in their hearts, so that they will never turn away from Me.
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. 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."
Within the same Book of Consolation, Jeremiah restates his new-covenant oracle three chapters later: "They will be My people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way... I will make an everlasting covenant with them... and I will put My fear in their hearts, so that they will never turn away from Me" (Jer 32:38-40). The restatement reproduces and amplifies the constitutive promises of Jeremiah 31:31-34: the covenant formula ("they will be My people, and I will be their God," 31:33b / 32:38), the interiorization ("inscribe it on their hearts," 31:33 / "I will put My fear in their hearts," 32:40), and the unilateral divine guarantee of the people's perseverance. Where chapter 31 calls the arrangement new, chapter 32 calls it everlasting (bĕrît ʿôlām) — the two adjectives together establish that the coming covenant is both unprecedented and irrevocable. The "one heart and one way" answers the divided, faithless heart that broke the Sinai covenant. This internal restatement confirms that the new-covenant oracle is no isolated saying but the theological center of Jeremiah's restoration message. Its significance terminates in the security of grace: because God himself puts his fear in the heart "so that they will never turn away," the covenant cannot fail — the believer's perseverance is God's gift, making the everlasting covenant a ground of unshakable joy rather than anxious effort. Hebrews 13:20 later draws on this "everlasting covenant" language to seal its new-covenant argument.