Did God ever say He was finished with Israel?
Question 2 of 5. What God said when people claimed He had cast Israel off, and what He swore to David.
Where it begins
Jeremiah spoke these words while Babylon's army surrounded Jerusalem and he himself was shut up in prison (; ). Judgment had come, just as the covenant at Sinai had warned. It was natural for people to conclude that God was finished with Israel. Scripture records exactly that conclusion, and then it records God's answer to it.
The answer Settled
Scripture does record the claim that God has cast Israel off, but it records it as something people said, and God answers it. In Jeremiah 33 people say that God has cast off the two families He chose. God replies that He would cast off Jacob's descendants only if His covenant with day and night failed, and He ends with a promise of return and mercy.
Jeremiah 31 makes the same pledge in two ways. Israel would cease from being a nation only if the fixed order of sun, moon, and stars departed. And God names the very reason people give for rejecting Israel, "all that they have done," and still says He would cast off Israel's seed only if heaven could be measured.
The covenant with David stands on the same footing. God swore it by His holiness and said He would not break it or change His word. He also said beforehand what the sins of David's sons would bring: punishment, not cancellation. When Psalm 89 later laments the crown thrown to the ground, it describes that punishment. It does not overturn the terms God swore.
The conditions attached to David's throne work the same way. Psalm 132 first says God swore to set the fruit of David's body on his throne and "will not turn from it" (), and only then makes the sons' continued reign depend on their obedience. When Solomon turned to other gods, God took most of the kingdom from his son but kept one tribe "for the sake of My servant David" (), and He said He would afflict David's descendants, "but not forever" ().
Scripture also answers the idea that God might take back what He has said. God is not a man, that He should lie; He has blessed Israel, and no one can reverse it. Even where Scripture says God regretted making Saul king, the same chapter says He would not lie or relent from the word He had spoken.
Jeremiah 18 says God may relent of good He announced to a nation that turns to evil. That is a rule for any nation, and it was pressed on Judah as a warning of coming judgment. It does not reach what God swore to Israel: the same prophet says her conduct will not make God cast off her seed, and the word for "relent" in Jeremiah 18 is the word denies once the LORD has sworn.
Finally, when Hebrews quotes Jeremiah's New Covenant, it keeps the parties Jeremiah named: the house of Israel and the house of Judah, whose fathers God led out of Egypt. Hebrews applies the covenant without renaming either party. And when Hebrews calls "the first" covenant obsolete, it means the one made with their fathers when God led them out of Egypt, the covenant at Sinai. The same letter calls God's oath to Abraham unchangeable.
Dive deeper
Each page below takes one part of this answer and shows the passages it rests on.
- Did God ever say He had cast Israel off? Jeremiah 31 and 33, where the claim is quoted and answered.
- Didn't the sins of David's sons end the covenant with David? Psalm 89, the conditions of Psalm 132 and 1 Kings 9, and what happened when Solomon broke them.
- Doesn't God sometimes change His mind? Balaam, Saul, the potter of Jeremiah 18, and the oath of Psalm 110.
- Doesn't Hebrews give the New Covenant to the church? Whom Jeremiah and Hebrews name, and which covenant Hebrews calls obsolete.