Jeremiah 31

Common English Bible

31 At that time, declares the Lord,
I will be the God of all the families of Israel,
and they will be my people.

²The Lord proclaims:
The people who survived the sword
    found grace in the wilderness.
As Israel searched for a place of rest,
³    the Lord appeared to them^[a] from a distance:^[b]
I have loved you with a love that lasts forever.
    And so with unfailing love,
        I have drawn you to myself.^[c]
⁴Again, I will build you up,
    and you will be rebuilt, virgin Israel.
Again, you will play your tambourines
    and dance with joy.
⁵Again, you will plant vineyards
    on the hills of Samaria;
    farmers will plant and then enjoy the harvests.
⁶The time will come when
    the watchmen shout from
        the highlands of Ephraim:
“Get ready! We’re going up to Zion
    to the Lord our God!”
⁷The Lord proclaims:
Sing joyfully for the people of Jacob;
    shout for the leading nation.
Raise your voices with praise and call out:
    “The Lord has saved his people,^[d]
    the remaining few in Israel!”

⁸I’m going to bring them back from the north;
    I will gather them from the ends of the earth.
Among them will be the blind and the disabled,
    expectant mothers and those in labor;
        a great throng will return here.
⁹With tears of joy they will come;
    while they pray, I will bring them back.
I will lead them by quiet streams
    and on smooth paths so they don’t stumble.
I will be Israel’s father,
    Ephraim will be my oldest child.

¹⁰Listen to the Lord’s word, you nations,
    and announce it to the distant islands:
The one who scattered Israel will gather them
    and keep them safe, as a shepherd his flock.
¹¹The Lord will rescue the people of Jacob
    and deliver them from the power of those stronger than they are.
¹²They will come shouting for joy on the hills of Zion,
    jubilant over the Lord’s gifts:
        grain, wine, oil, flocks, and herds.
Their lives will be like a lush garden;
    they will grieve no more.
¹³Then the young women will dance for joy;
    the young and old men will join in.
I will turn their mourning into laughter
    and their sadness into joy;
        I will comfort them.
¹⁴I will lavish the priests with abundance
    and shower my people with my gifts,
        declares the Lord.

¹⁵The Lord proclaims:
A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and wailing.
It’s Rachel crying for her children;
    she refuses to be consoled,
    because her children are no more.
¹⁶The Lord proclaims:
Keep your voice from crying
    and your eyes from weeping,
    because your endurance will be rewarded,
        declares the Lord.
    They will return from the land of their enemy!
¹⁷There’s hope for your future,
    declares the Lord.
        Your children will return home!

¹⁸I hear, yes, I hear Ephraim lamenting:
    “You disciplined me,
        and I learned my lesson,
    even though I was as stubborn as a mule.
Bring me back, let me return,
    because you are the Lord my God.
¹⁹After I turned away from you,
    I regretted it;
    I realized what I had done,
        and I have hit myself^[e]—
    I was humiliated and disgraced,
        and I have carried this disgrace
        since I was young.”

²⁰Isn’t Ephraim my much-loved child?
    Don’t I utterly adore him?
Even when I scold him,
    I still hold him dear.
I yearn for him and love him deeply,
    declares the Lord.

²¹Set up markers,
    put up signs;
    think about the road you have traveled,
        the path you have taken.
Return, virgin Israel;
    return to these towns of yours.
²²How long will you hem and haw,
    my rebellious daughter?
The Lord has created something new on earth:
    Virgin Israel will once again embrace her God!^[f]

²³The Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims: When I bring my people^[g] back from captivity, they will once again utter these words in the land and towns of Judah:

The Lord bless you,
righteous dwelling place,
holy mountain.

²⁴Those who live in Judah and its towns will dwell together with farmers and shepherds. ²⁵I will strengthen the weary and renew those who are weak.

²⁶Then I woke up and looked around. What a pleasant sleep I had!

²⁷The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will plant seeds in Israel and Judah, and both people and animals will spring up. ²⁸Just as I watched over them to dig up and pull down, to overthrow, destroy, and bring harm, so I will watch over them to build and plant, declares the Lord. ²⁹In those days, people will no longer say:

Sour grapes eaten by parents
    leave a bitter taste in the mouths of their children.
³⁰Because everyone will die for their own sins:
    whoever eats sour grapes
    will have a bitter taste in their own mouths.

³¹The time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. ³²It won’t be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant with me even though I was their husband, declares the Lord. ³³No, this is the covenant that I will make with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my Instructions within them and engrave them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. ³⁴They will no longer need to teach each other to say, “Know the Lord!” because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord; for I will forgive their wrongdoing and never again remember their sins.

³⁵The Lord proclaims:
The one who established the sun to light up the day
    and ordered^[h] the moon and stars to light up the night,
        who stirs up the sea into crashing waves,
        whose name is the Lord of heavenly forces:
³⁶    If the created order should vanish from my sight,
        declares the Lord,
    only then would Israel’s descendants ever stop being a nation
    before me.
³⁷The Lord proclaims:
If the heavens above could be measured
    and the foundation of the earth below could be fathomed,
    only then would I reject Israel’s descendants
        for what they have done,
            declares the Lord.

³⁸The time is coming, declares the Lord, when the city will be rebuilt for the Lord from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate. ³⁹Its boundaries will extend to the Gareb Hill and around to Goah. ⁴⁰The entire valley defiled by corpses and ashes, and all the fields as far as the Kidron Valley and the Horse Gate on the east, all this will be set apart for the Lord. And the city will never again be dug up or overthrown.

Footnotes

Jeremiah 31:3 Or to me
Jeremiah 31:3 Or a long time ago
Jeremiah 31:3 Heb lacks myself.
Jeremiah 31:7 LXX; MT Save your people, Lord
Jeremiah 31:19 Or struck my thigh
Jeremiah 31:22 Or a woman surrounds a man
Jeremiah 31:23 Or them
Jeremiah 31:35 Or orders of

Romans 7

Common English Bible

Freedom from the Law

7 Brothers and sisters, I’m talking to you as people who know the Law. Don’t you know that the Law has power over someone only as long as he or she lives? ²A married woman is united with her husband under the Law while he is alive. But if her husband dies, she is released from the Law concerning her husband. ³So then, if she lives with another man while her husband is alive, she’s committing adultery. But if her husband dies, she’s free from the Law, so she won’t be committing adultery if she marries someone else. ⁴Therefore, my brothers and sisters, you also died with respect to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you could be united with someone else. You are united with the one who was raised from the dead so that we can bear fruit for God. ⁵When we were self-centered, the sinful passions aroused through the Law were at work in all the parts of our body, so that we bore fruit for death. ⁶But now we have been released from the Law. We have died with respect to the thing that controlled us, so that we can be slaves in the new life under the Spirit, not in the old life under the written Law.

The function of the Law

⁷So what are we going to say? That the Law is sin? Absolutely not! But I wouldn’t have known sin except through the Law. I wouldn’t have known the desire for what others have if the Law had not said, Don’t desire to take what others have.^[a] ⁸But sin seized the opportunity and used this commandment to produce all kinds of desires in me. Sin is dead without the Law. ⁹I used to be alive without the Law, but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life, ¹⁰and I died. So the commandment that was intended to give life brought death. ¹¹Sin seized the opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and killed me. ¹²So the Law itself is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good.

Living under the Law

¹³So did something good bring death to me? Absolutely not! But sin caused my death through something good so that sin would be exposed as sin. That way sin would become even more thoroughly sinful through the commandment. ¹⁴We know that the Law is spiritual, but I’m made of flesh and blood, and I’m sold as a slave to sin. ¹⁵I don’t know what I’m doing, because I don’t do what I want to do. Instead, I do the thing that I hate. ¹⁶But if I’m doing the thing that I don’t want to do, I’m agreeing that the Law is right. ¹⁷But now I’m not the one doing it anymore. Instead, it’s sin that lives in me. ¹⁸I know that good doesn’t live in me—that is, in my body. The desire to do good is inside of me, but I can’t do it. ¹⁹I don’t do the good that I want to do, but I do the evil that I don’t want to do. ²⁰But if I do the very thing that I don’t want to do, then I’m not the one doing it anymore. Instead, it is sin that lives in me that is doing it.

²¹So I find that, as a rule, when I want to do what is good, evil is right there with me. ²²I gladly agree with the Law on the inside, ²³but I see a different law at work in my body. It wages a war against the law of my mind and takes me prisoner with the law of sin that is in my body. ²⁴I’m a miserable human being. Who will deliver me from this dead corpse? ²⁵Thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then I’m a slave to God’s Law in my mind, but I’m a slave to sin’s law in my body.