10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
11 None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them.
12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”
13 In that He says, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
The quote is from Jeremiah 31:33-34.
I will (v.10) — God will carry out the terms of the new covenant — it is unconditional.
those days (v.10) — after Israel’s period of unbelief and disobedience
I will be their God (v.10) — bestowing all benefits and blessings
they shall be My people (v.10) — submitting completely to His will
neighbor (v.11) = fellow-citizen
know (v.11 — first usage ) = a progressive knowledge, still incomplete
know (v.11 — second usage) = comprehensive, intuitive knowledge
for (v.12) — the explanation for the preceding statement
In saying the word “new” (v.8) God through the prophet Jeremiah had even at that time made the First Testament old. The distinctive Greek word for “old” here isn ot archaios, namely, that which is old in point of time, but palaios, that which is old in pont of use, worn-out, antiquated, useless, outmoded. Even in Jeremiah’s time, the insuffieciency of the First Testament was recognized, and the need of an ew one proclaimed. — Hebrews in the Greek New Testament, by Kenneth S. Wuest, page 149.
The new covenant says nothing of entrance into the Holiest, as we now know it; nothing of being raised up together and seated together in Christ Jesus in the heavenlies; nothing of union with Him as members of His Body by the indwelling Holy Spirit. It is blessing for the earth and on the earth in the coming day. But the fact that all these heavenly privileges are secured for the Church now by the shedding of the same blood of the covenant that is to procure future blessing for Israel, leads the apostle in the chapters that follow to stress our [?] present title to enter into the Holiest, which Israel and Judah are still disperesed among the Gentiles, waiting for the day when the new covenant will be confirmed to them. — Studies in the Epistle to the Hebrews, by H.A. Ironside, pages 100-101.