Today Jeremiah says a voice was heard – “Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted for her children, because they were no more.”
Remember Rachel was the younger sister of Leah, who Jacob loved and wanted to marry, but he got tricked into marrying Leah first. Well, Leah and Rachel both became Jacob’s wives and the tribes Ephraim and Manasseh (sons of Joseph) and Benjamin came from Jacob and Rachel.
The Lord says to stop weeping because there is hope for her children’s future. God says He will bring His people home and make a new covenant with them since they broke the old covenant. “I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people…For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sins I will remember no more.”
This new covenant will be established through the shedding of the blood of the innocent, Jesus Christ, on behalf of guilty sinners, us. While Jesus is having supper with His disciples before He is crucified, He will take a cup of wine as an illustration and tell the men, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you” (Luke 22:20). Later Paul will tell us that this is a better covenant (Hebrews 7:22). After Jesus’s death and resurrection, Jesus will ascend to heaven where He sits at the right hand of the Lord as the High Priest. “But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises” (Hebrews 8:6). And anyone who puts their faith in Jesus Christ will be saved by grace through faith.
God goes on to say that He will punish Babylon because they took such joy in destroying His inheritance – “First the king of Assyria devoured him; Now at last this Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon has broken his bones.” The Lord will break Babylon like He broke Assyria and, “The iniquity of Israel shall be sought, but there shall be none…For I will pardon those whom I preserve.”
Tomorrow Babylon captures Jerusalem. Keep reading.
(Jeremiah 31:15-40, Jeremiah 49:34-51:14)
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Chronological Bible in Layman's Terms 