Jeremiah 31  - This chapter is maybe one of the most important biblical passages in Quaker “theology.” Jeremiah gives voice to his prophecy of the “New Covenant.” I don’t think scholars are sure of the origin of the Book of Consolation  (chapters 30 through 33}, of which this is a part. Laurence Boadt, in his Reading the Old Testament, says that they are “words of hope from a variety of different times and occasions. Some . . . are addressed to ‘Israel’ and probably were from the early days of Jeremiah’s prophetic work under Josiah when he was addressing the remnants of the northern kingdom of Israel. His comforting words are later reused to comfort the exiles of Judah who would be the “new Israel” (373). 

Jeremiah says God’s people will find pardon in the wilderness.  “I have loved you with an everlasting love. . .I will guide [you] to streams of water, by a smooth path where [you] will not stumble. For I am a father to Israel” (31:3 and 9).  They “will be like a well-watered garden; they will have everything they need. . . I will comfort them and turn their mourning into joy, and their sorrow into gladness” (31:12-13).

The two important messianic verses follow in verses 31:21-22. If you “google” around a little, you will find that there is a good deal of controversy over exactly how the verses should be translated:

1)     My Catholic Jerusalem Bible has the following: “Set up signposts, raise landmarks; mark the road well, the way by which you went. Come home, virgin of Israel, come home to these towns of yours.  How long will you hesitate, disloyal daughter? For Yahweh is creating something new on earth: the Woman sets out to find her Husband again.” The Jerusalem Bible note here indicates that there is a lack of clarity in the last line in Hebrew.  The Hebrew verb, which they translate here as ‘set out to find again’, means literally ‘to surround’, ‘to turn around something’ [or dance around it], or ‘to go looking for’. The Vulgate Latin edition, translated by Jerome in the 4^th century emphasized the messianic meaning by translating it as “the woman will surround the man” and this was interpreted as referring to Mary’s virginal conception of Christ.”

2)     And then comes the prophecy of the New Covenant:  “See, the days are coming—it is Yahweh who speaks—when I will make a new covenant with the House of Israel (and the House of Judah), but not a covenant like the one I made with their ancestors . . . Deep within them I will plant my Law, writing it on their hearts.  Then I will be their God and they shall be my people.  There will be no further need for neighbor to try to teach neighbor, or brother to say to brother, ‘Learn to know Yahweh!’ No, they will all know me, the least no less than the greatest [. . .] since I will forgive their iniquity and never call their sin to mind” (31:31-34). Cross references include all of the following: Ps.51; Mt 26:28; 2 Cor 3-6; Rm 11:27; Heb 8:6-13 and 9:15; 1 Jn 5:20.

For early Friends, this promise of a New Covenant that no man could teach, but only God’s Spirit, present in the human heart, was perhaps the most important verse of scripture. Here are Fox’s words about it:

“He it is that is now come and hath given us an understanding that we may know him that is true; and to rule in our hearts even with his law; and to rule in our hearts even with his law of love and of life in our inward parts which makes us free from the law of sin and death. And we have no life but by him, for he is the quickening spirit, the second Adam, the Lord from heaven, by whose blood we are cleaned and our consciences sprinkled from dead works to serve the living God, by whose blood we are purchased, and so he is our mediator that makes peace and reconciliation between God offended and us offending, being the oath of God, the new covenant of light, life, grace, and peace, the author and finisher of our faith” (Journal 603).

While almost every Quaker will happily turn to these words of Fox to justify their conviction that the New Covenant means NO ONE NEEDS TO BE TAUGHT by anyone about the Way we must “walk,” few in my experience would say the other things Fox says here: that we have “no life but by [Christ]” or that it is through Christ’s blood that we are redeemed.

Jeremiah 32 - It is again 588/587 BC, during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem.  Zedekiah has Jeremiah imprisoned in Court of the Guard in the Royal Palace for prophesying Judah’s defeat. The Lord tells Jeremiah that his cousin Hanamel will come to sell him some of the family land in Anathoth and that he should buy it as an act of faith in the restoration promised by God (32:38-40), even in the face of imminent destruction.  He gives the deed to Baruch, his scribe to put in an earthen jar for safe-keeping. Then again, we hear the words of God to Jeremiah, words promising redemption:

“I am going to gather the people from all the countries where I have scattered them in my anger and fury, and I am going to bring them back to this place and let them live here in safety. Then they will be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them a single purpose in life: to honor me for all time, for their own good and the good of their descendants. I will make an eternal covenant with them.” (32:37-40).

2 Corinthians 12 - Paul speaks of his visions and ‘openings” or revelations.  He speaks of someone he knows that he says was “caught up to the third heaven” (12:2) fourteen years earlier and “heard ineffable things, which no one may utter” (12:4). The NAB note indicates that this is just a more “distant” way of referring to himself, but I am not sure how this interpretation came about. Paul continues to speak of his dedication to the work of apostleship he has done. He acknowledges his weaknesses. He sees them as a way of keeping him humble. “I am content with weaknesses, insult, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong" (12:10). 

2 Corinthians 13- Paul warns the Corinthians that he will not be lenient with them when he comes the third time. They are looking for him to give “proof” that Christ is speaking in him, but Christ and he share the same power.  “For indeed he was crucified out of weakness, but he lives by the power of God.  So also we are weak in him, but toward you we shall live with him by the power of God” (13:4).  Then these wonderful words: “Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in faith.  Test yourselves.  Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” or better yet the JB translation, “Do you acknowledge that Jesus Christ is really in you? If not, you have failed the test” (12:5-6).