Doesn't Hebrews give the New Covenant to the church?

The short answer Settled

Hebrews quotes the New Covenant and keeps the parties Jeremiah named: the house of Israel and the house of Judah, whose fathers God led out of Egypt. It applies the covenant without renaming either party or saying it was transferred. That settles whom these passages name. It does not by itself settle how others share in the covenant's blessings. And when Hebrews calls "the first" covenant obsolete, it means the covenant made at Sinai, not the covenant with Abraham or the people Jeremiah named.

Whom Jeremiah names

God says, "I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah" (Jeremiah 31:31). He identifies those houses by their history: the covenant will be "not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt" (Jeremiah 31:32). Then He names Israel again: "this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel" (Jeremiah 31:33).

This is the same chapter that ties Israel's continuing as a nation to the sun, moon, and stars (Jeremiah 31:35-37).

What Hebrews keeps

Hebrews quotes the passage with the same parties: a new covenant "with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah" (Hebrews 8:8). It keeps the same history, the covenant made with "their fathers" when God took them "to lead them out of the land of Egypt" (Hebrews 8:9), and it names Israel again: "this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel" (Hebrews 8:10). The New Testament quotation changes neither the names nor the ancestry by which Jeremiah identifies them.

Which covenant is obsolete

Hebrews ends the quotation with a comment on the word "new": "He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away" (Hebrews 8:13).

Hebrews tells the reader which covenant "the first" is. It is the covenant "that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt" (Hebrews 8:9). It "had ordinances of divine service and the earthly sanctuary" (Hebrews 9:1), and it was dedicated with blood when Moses had spoken every precept of the law (Hebrews 9:18-20). That is the covenant made at Sinai. In the Greek, "first" has no noun beside it. Its feminine form stands for the feminine word for covenant, which is why the translations supply "covenant" in italics.

The same letter calls God's oath to Abraham unchangeable. God "confirmed it by an oath" to show "the immutability of His counsel" (Hebrews 6:17). Paul says the same: the law, given "four hundred and thirty years later, cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God" (Galatians 3:17).

What grows old is a covenant. The people remain: God found fault "with them" (Hebrews 8:8), and His answer was a new covenant with the same two houses.

The usual objection

Because Hebrews quotes the New Covenant in a letter written to believers, it is argued that "the house of Israel" and "the house of Judah" now name the church, or that the covenant has passed from the people Jeremiah named to a different people. It is also argued that Hebrews 8:13 calls Israel's covenant obsolete, so God's dealings with Israel as a nation have grown old and vanished.

Hebrews does apply the covenant in its argument about Christ as the Mediator of a better covenant. But it keeps both house names, the fathers, the exodus, and the repeated name Israel. It never renames either party, and it never says a transfer took place. The covenant it calls obsolete is the one made at Sinai. The oath to Abraham, which the same letter calls unchangeable, is not, and neither are the two houses the new covenant is made with.

The words behind it