Jeremiah 31:40

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anochria
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Jeremiah 31:40

Post by anochria » Sat Mar 31, 2012 1:22 pm

Jeremiah 31:27
"The days are coming," declares the LORD, "when I will plant the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the offspring of men and of animals. 28 Just as I watched over them to uproot and tear down, and to overthrow, destroy and bring disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant," declares the LORD. 29 "In those days people will no longer say, 'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.' 30 Instead, everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes--his own teeth will be set on edge. 31 "The time is coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them, " declares the LORD. 33 "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time," declares the LORD. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man 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 wickedness and will remember their sins no more." 35 This is what the LORD says, he who appoints the sun to shine by day, who decrees the moon and stars to shine by night, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar-- the LORD Almighty is his name: 36 "Only if these decrees vanish from my sight," declares the LORD, "will the descendants of Israel ever cease to be a nation before me." 37 This is what the LORD says: "Only if the heavens above can be measured and the foundations of the earth below be searched out will I reject all the descendants of Israel because of all they have done," declares the LORD. 38 "The days are coming," declares the LORD, "when this city will be rebuilt for me from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate. 39 The measuring line will stretch from there straight to the hill of Gareb and then turn to Goah. 40 The whole valley where dead bodies and ashes are thrown, and all the terraces out to the Kidron Valley on the east as far as the corner of the Horse Gate, will be holy to the LORD. The city will never again be uprooted or demolished."

I'm preparing to teach through Jeremiah in Costa Rica (YWAM) this summer and this passage is probably the thorniest from a prophecy standpoint.

It seems to read literally that the city Jerusalem would never be demolished again after the return of the exiles from Babylon. However, this is precisely what happened in AD 70. And this second uprooting seems to be predicted by both Daniel and Zechariah.

From a partial preterist perspective (my favored view of eschatology), are we to see this reference to Jerusalem in Jer. 31:40 as a reference to spiritual Jerusalem (ie, the church)? Seems a bit awkward.
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steve
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Re: Jeremiah 31:40

Post by steve » Sat Mar 31, 2012 4:17 pm

I agree that this kind of passage is difficult. (By the way, are you teaching Jeremiah for an SBS?)

I think that the context immediately preceding does sound like the new covenant city (the Church) is the "Jerusalem" that is mentioned. Alternately, the never-again-to-be-destroyed aspect of the prophecy may be with unstated conditions implied (see Jer. 18:7-10). Sometimes conditional promises are mentioned without mentioning the conditions.

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Re: Jeremiah 31:40

Post by anochria » Sat Mar 31, 2012 4:30 pm

The language applied to Jerusalem in Jeremiah 30 is pretty similar to the language applied to Messiah's kingdom in Daniel 7

13 "In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

and

27 Then the sovereignty, power and greatness of the kingdoms under the whole heaven will be handed over to the saints, the people of the Most High. His kingdom will be an everlasting kingdom, and all rulers will worship and obey him.'

Perhaps we see in Daniel (as in many other aspects) a further clarification or magnifying of the specific prophetic promise toward Israel.

The thing that makes Jeremiah (and Ezekiel) problematic to me is that they spend so much time dwelling on geographical particulars in their prophetic announcements of God's future for Israel- to the point that it seems like the New Testament message of kingdom= church could have been onerously hard to swallow by Jews serious about their scriptures.
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Re: Jeremiah 31:40

Post by anochria » Sat Mar 31, 2012 4:37 pm

Yes, I'm teaching for an SBS (or BCC). A couple from Aletheia (and also supported by ACF) works at the San Jose base, and the husband runs the SBS there. My wife and I are going down for a week and a half late June. I'm really excited!
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Re: Jeremiah 31:40

Post by jriccitelli » Mon Apr 02, 2012 11:14 am

It seemed to me that the borders of the city in Jer.31 were larger than the borders completed by the time of it's destruction in 70ad. I only have considered this in passing and never researched the questionable (Gareb Hill? Goah? Which horse gate? etc.) boundaries mentioned in Jer.31 because they are hard to determine, so I was under the impression that the Jews never fulfilled building the city to the dimensions of Jer.31:38-40, therefore the Jews at that time may not have been able to argue with new testament prophets on the coming new Jerusalem which does seem to expand to the greater dimensions. So if the Jews never built to these boundaries, and certainly the valley of the dead bodies (valley of Hinnom?) were never called Holy, as the city Jerusalem was. The Jews it seems did not yet fulfill the city Jeremiah was talking about. I've wondered how the words read from the dead sea scrolls. (?)
Sounds like good teaching fodder to me.

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Re: Jeremiah 31:40

Post by anochria » Mon Apr 09, 2012 11:13 pm

Just an fyi chime in from the early church: Jerome, Theodoret of Syr, and Ephrem the Syrian saw this passage as only fully fulfilled in the church, though partially fulfilled in Israel's history.
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Re: Jeremiah 31:40

Post by Paidion » Tue Apr 10, 2012 10:28 pm

It never ceases to amaze me — the lengths to which we go in order to show that unfulfilled prophecies actually have been fulfilled in some obscure or ethereal sense. Why do we not simply throw a fit of rage and sulk as Jonah did? Then God might show us why He changed His mind about his intentions — as He did Jonah.
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Re: Jeremiah 31:40

Post by anochria » Tue Apr 10, 2012 11:19 pm

Paidion, seems to me that you might level that charge against the New Testament authors themselves.
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Re: Jeremiah 31:40

Post by Paidion » Wed Apr 11, 2012 1:39 pm

Anochria wrote:Paidion, seems to me that you might level that charge against the New Testament authors themselves.
Not quite, Anochria, though I see your point.

The NT authors understood Jesus as "fulfilling" the prophecies if anything Jesus did in his life corresponded to the prophecy. For example, the gospel writer, Mark, says that Jesus' parents, at the words of an angel, took him to Egypt to escape Herod. Mark wrote that, when they returned later, "This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, 'Out of Egypt I called my son.' "

Now Mark was familiar enough with the OT passage to quote it, and so he must have known that Israel was the son being referenced here:

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. (Hosea 11:1)

So for Mark and other NT authors, Christ "fullfilling" a prophecy seems to mean that that prophecy could be applied to some event in Christ's life. I don't say that there's anything wrong with that.

It reminds me of a person who draws out a passage from a "promise box" and tries to apply that passage to his life, even though the passage was meant for a different time and place. I don't say that there's anything wrong with that.

So if we want to apply the prophecy of Jeremiah 31:40 to the church which will never be destroyed — well and good. But in doing so, if we suppose that the passage did not originally refer to Jerusalem itself, but was "figurative language", then, we are in error.
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Re: Jeremiah 31:40

Post by anochria » Mon Apr 16, 2012 3:13 pm

Not quite, Anochria, though I see your point.

The NT authors understood Jesus as "fulfilling" the prophecies if anything Jesus did in his life corresponded to the prophecy. For example, the gospel writer, Mark, says that Jesus' parents, at the words of an angel, took him to Egypt to escape Herod. Mark wrote that, when they returned later, "This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, 'Out of Egypt I called my son.' "

Now Mark was familiar enough with the OT passage to quote it, and so he must have known that Israel was the son being referenced here:

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. (Hosea 11:1)

So for Mark and other NT authors, Christ "fullfilling" a prophecy seems to mean that that prophecy could be applied to some event in Christ's life. I don't say that there's anything wrong with that.
Actually, I don't really see your point. You are giving an example of "double fulfillment".

Are you trying to say it was okay because there was a literal double fulfillment, but not okay when the secondary fulfillment is "spiritualized"?

But I wasn't thinking of those kind of references to fulfillment in the OT. I was thinking of that fact that the New Testament authors consistantly reinterpret Israel= church, Zion= church, The (new or true) Jerusalem= church. So it's really not that much of a stretch to suppose that they might see prophecies which were originally about these physical places as having a secondary and even deeper fulfillment in spiritual realities, such as God's "kingdom not of this world".
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