There is one passage that Torah-keeping communities and the Hebrew Roots Movement return to more consistently than any other when making the case for New Covenant Torah observance. It is not in Galatians or Romans or Colossians - the letters where Paul most directly addresses the law's relationship to New Covenant believers. It is in Jeremiah. And the HRM reads it as the definitive proof that the New Covenant does not replace Torah but internalises it.

"The days are coming," declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them," declares the Lord. "This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time," declares the Lord. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbour, or say to one another, '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 wickedness and will remember their sins no more." - Jeremiah 31:31-34

The HRM argument is straightforward. The New Covenant promise is that God will write his Torah on the hearts of his people. Therefore the New Covenant does not replace Torah. It internalises it. Torah observance is not abolished - it is deepened, written on the heart, empowered by the Spirit. The New Covenant is Torah keeping from the inside rather than the outside. And therefore Gentile believers in the New Covenant are called to Torah observance - not as external compliance but as Spirit-empowered heart obedience.

It sounds compelling. It uses the right passage. It appeals to genuine New Covenant language. And it collapses completely when you read the two words that define the New Covenant before anything else is said about it.

The Two Words That Change Everything

Before God says anything about what the New Covenant will be - before the law on the heart, before the direct knowledge of God, before the forgiveness of sins - he defines the New Covenant by what it will not be. It will not be like the covenant made at Sinai. Not like it. Not a renewed version of it. Not a deepened version of it. Not the same covenant now written internally rather than externally. Explicitly and deliberately NOT LIKE it.

This is not a peripheral observation. It is Jeremiah's own definition of the New Covenant stated before any of its positive characteristics are described. The first thing God says about the New Covenant is that it will not be like the old one. The HRM reads everything that follows - the law on the heart, the direct knowledge of God, the forgiveness of sins - and concludes that the New Covenant is essentially a renewal and internalisation of the Mosaic covenant. But the passage defines itself before those positive characteristics are reached. And the definition is NOT LIKE.

What NOT LIKE Actually Means

The Hebrew is lo - a simple, unqualified negation. Not like. Not similar to. Not a continuation of. The comparison is with the Sinai covenant specifically - the covenant made when God led Israel out of Egypt, the covenant at the mountain, the covenant of the law of Moses. And the New Covenant's relationship to that specific covenant is defined by a simple negation.

NOT LIKE is an absolute statement. Not a qualified one. The text does not say:

• Not like the old in its primary purpose but similar in its content
• Not like the old in its external form but continuous in its substance
• Not like the old in its mechanism but identical in its requirements
• Mostly not like the old except for Sabbath, dietary laws and the feast calendar

It says NOT LIKE. Which means the logic that follows is straightforward and unavoidable:

New - Not Renewed

The word new in Jeremiah 31:31 is chadash in Hebrew - meaning genuinely, categorically new. Not renovated. Not refreshed. Not the same thing improved and updated. A new thing. The same word appears in Isaiah 43:19 - "See I am doing a new thing" - where the newness is explicitly contrasted with what came before. And in Isaiah 65:17 - "See I will create new heavens and a new earth" - where the newness is categorical and total.

The New Testament author who quotes Jeremiah 31 most extensively confirms this reading. Hebrews 8:13 draws the conclusion from the passage with crystalline precision:

"By speaking of a new covenant, he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and ageing will soon disappear." - Hebrews 8:13

The author of Hebrews - writing under inspiration, interpreting Jeremiah 31 for New Covenant believers - does not conclude that the Mosaic covenant has been internalised. He concludes that it has been made obsolete. The Greek word is pepalaiooken - obsolete, worn out, no longer operative. This is the apostolic interpretation of Jeremiah 31. Not renewal. Not internalisation. Obsolescence.

The HRM requires Jeremiah 31 to teach continuity - the same Torah now written on hearts. The New Testament's own interpretation of Jeremiah 31 teaches discontinuity - the first covenant made obsolete by the arrival of something new. These are not compatible readings. One of them is right. And the one with apostolic authority behind it is not the HRM's.

The Book and Chapter Context

Jeremiah was prophesying to Judah in the final decades before the Babylonian destruction - approximately 627 to 586 BC. The people he addressed were fully Torah-observant in the external sense. They maintained the temple, the sacrifices, the feast calendar, the Sabbath, the entire Mosaic covenant apparatus. And God was about to send them into exile because their covenant faithfulness was external without being genuine.

Jeremiah 31 sits within what scholars call the Book of Consolation - chapters 30-33 - a section of future hope amid the announcement of coming judgment. The New Covenant promise of verses 31-34 is not a promise to restore Torah observance among people who had abandoned it. It is a promise to do something categorically new with a people whose Torah observance had consistently failed to produce genuine covenant relationship with God.

The problem Jeremiah identifies is not insufficient Torah knowledge or insufficient Torah compliance. The problem is the human heart - verse 32, they broke my covenant though I was a husband to them. Torah observance did not fix the heart problem. The New Covenant promise is that God will address the heart problem directly - from the inside, by his own initiative, producing something that external Torah observance never could.

That is not Torah internalised. That is the human heart transformed. The difference is categorical.

What the Law on the Heart Actually Means

The HRM reads "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts" as Torah internalised - the same commandments now written internally by the Spirit rather than on stone externally. This reading sounds natural until you examine what Jeremiah says surrounds it.

Verse 34 - "No longer will they teach their neighbour or say to one another 'Know the Lord' because they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest." This is a description of direct, unmediated knowledge of God - available to all, requiring no human instruction, no priestly mediation, no covenant specialist. This is categorically different from anything the Mosaic covenant produced or could produce. The Mosaic covenant required priests, teachers, Levites, prophets to mediate God's presence and instruction to the people. The New Covenant promise is the end of that mediation structure entirely.

If the law on the heart means Torah internalised - if the New Covenant is essentially the Mosaic covenant written internally - then the mediation structure should continue. Torah teachers, Sabbath instruction, dietary guidance, feast day observance - all the apparatus of Torah transmission should still be needed. But Jeremiah says it will not be needed. Nobody will need to teach their neighbour to know God. The direct knowledge will be universal.

The law on the heart is not Torah written internally. It is the moral character of God - his justice, his love, his holiness - produced from within by the Spirit, making external covenant administration unnecessary because the reality it pointed toward has arrived in person. Our article on what the moral law actually is examines how the Spirit produces this moral content without the Mosaic covenant administration.

Ezekiel 36:26-27 describes the same promise from a different angle: "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws." The Spirit causes believers to walk in God's ways - not through external Torah compliance but through internal transformation. The causation is the Spirit's activity. The result is the moral character God always wanted. The mechanism is completely new.

Romans 8:4 confirms this as the New Testament's understanding: "in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit." The righteous requirement of the law is fully met - not through Torah observance but through walking by the Spirit. That is what the law on the heart produces. Not a Torah observance programme. Spirit-produced moral transformation that fulfils what Torah always pointed toward.

Hebrews 8 - The Apostolic Interpretation

The author of Hebrews quotes Jeremiah 31:31-34 in full - the longest Old Testament quotation in the entire New Testament. This is not incidental. The author considered Jeremiah 31 so significant that he reproduced it completely. And then drew the conclusion in verse 13 that leaves no room for the HRM reading.

By calling the covenant new God made the first one obsolete. Obsolete. Not internalised. Not renewed. Not deepened. Obsolete. The first covenant - the Sinai covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the covenant of Torah - has been made obsolete by the arrival of the new one. This is not Paul's conclusion. This is not a Gentile misreading of Jewish Scripture. This is Hebrews - a letter saturated in Jewish covenant theology, written to Jewish believers, engaging the Hebrew Scriptures with extraordinary depth and precision - concluding that Jeremiah 31 teaches the obsolescence of the Mosaic covenant.

Hebrews 7:12 adds the covenantal logic: "For when the priesthood is changed, the law must be changed also." The Levitical priesthood has been superseded by Christ's eternal priesthood after the order of Melchizedek. Therefore the law itself changes. This is not the law abandoned. It is the law changed - because God's own word said it would change when the priesthood changed. Torah-keeping communities who honour the law of God must honour this statement. It is in the law of God. It says the law changes.

The Most Common HRM Response - And Why It Fails

When confronted with "not like the old covenant" the standard Torah-observant response is that the delivery mechanism changes not the content. The Torah is the same - now written on hearts by the Spirit rather than on stone by Moses. The not like refers to how the covenant is administered not what it requires.

This response fails on the text's own terms for three reasons.

First - Jeremiah himself defines what makes the New Covenant not like the old one. Verse 32 - they broke my covenant. The failure of the Mosaic covenant was not a delivery mechanism problem. It was a heart problem. The people could not keep the covenant because their hearts were not transformed. The New Covenant addresses the heart problem. That is what makes it not like the old one - it addresses what the old one could not fix. If the content is identical but the delivery changes then the same heart problem remains. The people still need to comply with external Torah requirements. The not like has not been resolved.

Second - verse 34 says no one will need to teach their neighbour to know God. If the law on the heart means Torah written internally then Torah teachers are still needed - to explain the Sabbath requirements, the dietary laws, the feast calendar, the covenant details. But Jeremiah says teaching will be unnecessary because the direct knowledge will be universal. That is not a delivery mechanism change. That is the end of the entire mediation and instruction structure the Mosaic covenant required.

Third - Hebrews 8:13 says obsolete. Not differently administered. Obsolete. The author of Hebrews read the same passage and concluded that the first covenant has been made obsolete - not updated, not internalised, not renewed. Obsolete. If the only change were the delivery mechanism the author of Hebrews drew the wrong conclusion from the passage. Which requires either that Hebrews is wrong or that the HRM's reading of Jeremiah 31 is wrong. One of those options has apostolic authority behind it.

The Friend at the Braai

There is a conversation that happens regularly between people who have been in Torah-keeping communities and those who love them and are concerned about where the framework leads. It often reaches Jeremiah 31. And the HRM answer is usually some version of: the New Covenant is the old covenant now written on hearts. It is the same Torah, now internal, now empowered by the Spirit. It is the old but renewed.

The text says not like the old.

Not the old renewed. Not the old internalised. Not the old dusted off and made new. The covenant that is coming will not be like the covenant made at Sinai. If it were like it - in any significant way, in any of its defining covenant obligations - the text would not say not like. It would say like but deeper. Like but internal. Like but empowered. It says not like.

That is not a complicated reading. It is not a tradition-bound reading. It is not a reading that requires Greek or Hebrew or Second Temple scholarship. It is the plain reading of two words in their context. Not like. And the HRM position requires those two words to mean something other than what they say.

As our article on show me that in the text establishes, the HRM's consistent method is to import meaning into texts that do not contain it. Jeremiah 31 is the clearest example of this method applied to the most important text in their arsenal. The passage defines the New Covenant by its discontinuity with the Mosaic covenant. The HRM reads continuity. The passage says not like. The HRM reads like but internal. The passage produces the apostolic conclusion of obsolescence in Hebrews 8. The HRM produces the conclusion of internalised Torah observance.

One of those readings follows the text. The other follows a conclusion that was in place before the text was examined. As our article on the HRM closed loop demonstrates, the framework pre-filters which readings count as valid and which are dismissed as tradition-bound. Jeremiah 31's own NOT LIKE is dismissed. Hebrews 8's obsolete is explained away. And the framework continues.

What the New Covenant Actually Is

The New Covenant is not Torah without a temple. It is not Torah without animal sacrifices. It is not Torah observed in the right spirit rather than the wrong one. It is not Torah internalised by the Spirit. It is something categorically new - as new as a new heart replacing a heart of stone, as new as the Spirit dwelling within rather than descending from without, as new as direct unmediated knowledge of God available to all from the least to the greatest.

It is the covenant Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 3 - not of the letter but of the Spirit, not written on stone tablets but on tablets of human hearts, a ministry of the Spirit that surpasses in glory the ministry that brought death engraved in letters on stone. Our article on 2 Corinthians 3 and the fading glory examines this contrast in full. Not Torah on hearts instead of Torah on stone. The Spirit producing life where the letter produced death. A categorically different ministry producing a categorically different result.

It is the covenant the author of Hebrews describes - better promises, better priest, better sacrifice, better tabernacle, better hope. Not the same promises delivered more efficiently. Better promises. As our article on Colossians 2:16-17 shadow and substance shows, the feast calendar, dietary laws and Sabbath were shadows pointing to Christ - and the substance has arrived. Not like the old. As our articles on why the old covenant became obsolete and understanding the covenants examine in detail, the New Covenant is the arrival of what the Mosaic covenant was always pointing toward - not the perpetuation of the pointer after the destination has arrived. As our article on Galatians 3 and the law as guardian establishes, the guardian's role ends completely when the child matures.

It is the covenant Jesus announced at the Last Supper - this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Not a renewed covenant. Not a restored covenant. The new covenant. Sealed not with animal blood on stone but with his own blood on a cross. Not like the old. Not like it at all. This is what pure devotion to Christ means - the sincere and undiluted focus on him that the HRM quietly displaces with covenant addition.

"By speaking of a new covenant, he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and ageing will soon disappear." - Hebrews 8:13