At that time you were without Christ, excluded from the citizenship of Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world.
For you are a holy people belonging to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be his own possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth.
‘Instead, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days’ #– #the Lord’s declaration. ‘I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
I will confirm my covenant that is between me and you and your future offspring throughout their generations. It is a permanent covenant to be your God and the God of your offspring after you.
‘Listen to another parable: There was a landowner, who planted a vineyard, put a fence round it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. He leased it to tenant farmers and went away.
Isn’t Ephraim a precious son to me, a delightful child? Whenever I speak against him, I certainly still think about him. Therefore, my inner being yearns for him; I will truly have compassion on him. This is the Lord’s declaration.
They will come weeping, but I will bring them back with consolation. , I will lead them to wadis filled with water, by a smooth way where they will not stumble, for I am Israel’s Father, and Ephraim is my firstborn.
The sun will no longer be your light by day, and the brightness of the moon will not shine on you. The Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your splendour.
He broke up the soil, cleared it of stones, and planted it with the finest vines. He built a tower in the middle of it and even dug out a winepress there. He expected it to yield good grapes, but it yielded worthless grapes.
The Lord said to Moses, ‘You are about to rest with your ancestors, and these people will soon prostitute themselves with the foreign gods of the land they are entering. They will abandon me and break the covenant I have made with them.
These are the words of the covenant that the Lord commanded Moses to make with the Israelites in the land of Moab, in addition to the covenant he had made with them at Horeb.
When Moses entered the tent of meeting to speak with the Lord, he heard the voice speaking to him from above the mercy seat that was on the ark of the testimony, from between the two cherubim. He spoke to him that way.
On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘I give this land to your offspring, from the Brook of Egypt to the great river, the River Euphrates:
The appearance of the brilliant light all around was like that of a rainbow in a cloud on a rainy day. This was the appearance of the likeness of the Lord’s glory. When I saw it, I fell face down and heard a voice speaking.
Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say ‘and to seeds’, as though referring to many, but referring to one, and to your seed, , who is Christ.