New or Renewed Covenant Part 2

The word in Jeremiah 31:31 translated as "new" or "renewed" is hadash. In the text, it is an adjective. However, in Hebrew an adjective can also serve as a predicate in a verbless clause. So while the word is an adjective, action can also be involved. The root word is composed of three consonants (remember Biblical Hebrew did not originally have vowels): Chet, Dalet, and Shin. Hebrew letters are also pictures and numbers. The word picture for Chet is fence, inner room. The word picture for Dalet is door. The word picture for Shin is teeth, i.e. to consume or destroy. When read together, the word picture for hadash can be seen as destroying the door to the inner room. According to Hebrew Honey, (a wonderful little book written by a Christian pastor Dr. Al Novak that explains more than 500 Hebrew words and it requires no training in Hebrew) hadash means, "Primarily the notion of cutting, scraping, polishing. No wonder becoming a new creature in the Lord is a moving work of the Holy Spirit." There is a work of YHVH on every follower of the Way to be scraped and cut. Our old fences or inner rooms need to be destoyed so they can be replaced with His fences and His ways. Our old inner ways must be cut out. To say that the covenant is renewed is to state that whereas the covenant at Sinai was on stone, the renewed covenant is the work of the Ruach HaKodesh on the hearts of mankind.

As stated, the root word is composed of Chet, Dalet, and Shin. It means to renew or repair. The word used in Jeremiah 31:31 is a derivative of the root word. The derivative word does not replace the root word in Hebrew. Instead, in Hebrew you look at the root word to help understand the true meaning of the derivative. From the site Judaism 101 (http://www.jewfaq.org/) the following material is offered to assist in understanding how Hebrew words are created:

1. The vast majority of words in the Hebrew language can be boiled down to a three-consonant root word that contains the essence of the word's meaning. Even if you cannot read Hebrew, you will find that you can get some insight into the meaning of the Bible by identifying the roots of words. If you see the same English word in two different places, but different Hebrew roots are used, this may indicate that there is a different shade of meaning. If the same Hebrew root is used in two different places, the words and their meanings are probably related.

2. Hebrew words are formed from roots by changing vowels and by adding a wealth of prefixes and suffixes to that root. Prefixes can be prepositions (in, on, of, to, etc.), articles (the), or other things. Suffixes can be pronouns (he, you, our, etc.), possessives ('s), or can indicate gender and number (female singular; male plural, etc.). Because of the way these prefixes and suffixes are added to the root, a single word in Hebrew might be translated into English as several words.

The essence of the derivative word translated as "new" is seen in the root word that means renew or repair. So, even if we use the word "new," we do so understanding that the "new" does not mean brand new. Instead, it means new in the sense of restoration, and in this case how something is learned, i.e. as opposed to reading the tablets of stone the Torah is placed on the heart by YHVH. For example, every 3o days we have a "New Moon." Is it really new, or the beginning of a new lunar cycle? It is important that we practice exegesis. The Liberty University web site defines exegesis as: "Proper exegesis includes using the context around the passage, comparing it with other parts of the Bible, and applying an understanding of the language and customs of the time of the writing, in an attempt to understand clearly what the original writer intended to convey." The opposite is eisegesis. Eisegesis is the interpretation of a text (as of the Bible) by reading into it one's own ideas as opposed to the original author. Exegesis draws out truth while eisgesis reads into a text. In Jeremiah 31, the author is referring to the restoration of Israel after the Babylonian exile and the reconstruction of the Temple (Jewish Study Bible Study Notes). I don't think Jeremiah has in mind something totally new. I think a fair reading would be that he believed that the new covenant would be a renewal of the Sinai covenant on the inside of the Jewish people. If that is the original author's intent, we should not stray far from it.