Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Jeremiah · About this commentary
The Branch, the Priesthood and the Covenant of Day and Night
Jeremiah 33:14-26
14 “Behold, the days come,” says Yahweh, “that I will perform that good word which I have spoken concerning the house of Israel and concerning the house of Judah. · WEB
The promises to David and to the priesthood are guaranteed by the regularity of day and night, and the guarantee is offered to people who had decided God was finished with them.
The Branch returns, and the wording differs from the earlier oracle in one significant way. There the coming king was to be called Yahweh our righteousness Jeremiah 23:6; here the same name is given to the city. What belongs to the king is transferred to the people who live under him, which is how the two passages read together: the righteousness is his, and they are called by it.
Two permanences are then declared. David will never lack a man to sit on the throne, and the Levitical priests will never lack a man before God to offer sacrifice. Both are given without conditions, which is remarkable in a book that has just ended a dynasty and watched a temple emptied. The guarantee attached to them is the strongest available: If you can break my covenant of the day and my covenant of the night, so that there will not be day and night in their time, then my covenant could also be broken with David my servant. Sunrise is offered as the collateral.
What the promise does not do is specify a form, and that restraint should be respected rather than filled in. The line of David did not resume as a monarchy after the return, and the Levitical sacrifices did in fact stop. What the text commits to is that a descendant of David reigns and that priestly ministry continues before God; how those stand together it does not say here, and the Branch of the previous verses is plainly the figure carrying the first of them. The multiplication promised is also worth marking, because the language is borrowed from elsewhere: David's offspring and the ministering Levites are to be as uncountable as the host of heaven and the sand of the sea, which is what had been sworn to Abraham about a nation Genesis 22:17. Kingship and priesthood are being promised on the scale of a people rather than of two families.
And the occasion for all of it is a remark overheard in the street. People were saying, Has Yahweh cast off the two families which he chose? — meaning Israel and Judah, both apparently finished. The reply does not argue with the evidence, which was overwhelming, and it does not promise a quick reversal. It says that casting them off would require the ordinances of heaven and earth to fail first. The despair is answered by pointing at the sky, and the last clause gives the reason underneath the argument: I will cause their captivity to be reversed and will have mercy on them.
held with reason What this mark means