‘For this is the covenant that I shall conclude with the house of Israel after those days,’ is the utterance of Jehovah. ‘I will put my law within them, and in their heart I shall write it. And I will become their God, and they themselves will become my people.’

Jer. 31:31-34.

A NEW MEDIATOR NEEDED

17. Why should we today still be interested in the new covenant, and how long ago was it that the Law covenant was already old and about to pass away?

¹⁷ Are we today interested in that new covenant? We should be, for it is still in force. But with whom has it been in force till now? The millions of Jews throughout the earth do not claim that it is in force with them. They believe that they are still under the covenant made with their forefathers at Mount Sinai. That was more than 3,490 years ago! Jehovah’s promise of a new covenant was made through Jeremiah more than 2,580 years ago. If those Jews are right, why has God been so long about putting the promised new covenant into force? Why, more than 1,900 years ago the Jewish Law covenant was already old and apparently due to pass away to make way for the new covenant. Did it do so?

18. (a) God’s promise of a covenant that was “new” indicated what concerning the Law covenant and put it in what age bracket? (b) How was that Law code transmitted to the nation of Israel?

¹⁸ On this point a Jewish student who used to sit at the feet of the famous Pharisee teacher, Gamaliel in Jerusalem, wrote: “In his saying ‘a new covenant’ he has made the former one obsolete. Now that which is made obsolete and growing old is near to vanishing away.” (Heb. 8:13; 2 Cor. 3:14) When the Jewish writer penned those words to Christianized Hebrews in Jerusalem, it was about the year 61 C.E. In an earlier letter to Christian congregations in the Roman province of Galatia, he wrote: “Why, then, the Law? It was added [to the Abrahamic covenant concerning the Seed] to make transgressions [by humans] manifest, until the seed [of Abraham] should arrive to whom the promise had been made; and it was transmitted through angels by the hand of a mediator.”​—Gal. 3:19.

19. Because the Law covenant needed Moses as a mediator, what does this argue regarding the new covenant, which is also made between God and men?

¹⁹ That unnamed mediator was Moses. Now if the making of the old Law covenant required him as a mediator between God and imperfect, sinful men, certainly the making of the new covenant between God and men would call for a mediator, even though he is not mentioned in Jeremiah 31:31-34.