Jeremiah 33:20

Jer 33:20 Thus saith the LORD; If ye can break my covenant of the day, and my covenant of the night, and that there should not be day and night in their season;

Ver. 20. If ye can break my covenant of the day.] God hath hitherto kept promise with nights and days, that one shall succeed the other; and will he not then keep in touch with his people?

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Jer_33:20-26

If ye can break My covenant of the day, and My covenant of the night . . . Then may also My covenant be broken with David My servant.

Gods great day-and-night engine, as a witness against skepticism

Day and night in their season are Gods perpetual challenge to unbelief, His sublime witnesses to the perpetuity of His Church. The doubters in Jeremiahs time saw, or thought they saw in the captivity of Israel already accomplished, and that of Judah foretold as nigh at hand, the complete breakdown of all Gods plans and promises as to His people and His Church. They said: The two families (Judah and Israel) which the Lord did choose, Tie hath even cast them off. Theres an end of all our fine expectations! Prophecy breaks down! God cant keep His contract! Religion is a failure! We told you so! But what does God say to them in reply? Thus saith the Lord If My covenant of day and night stand not, if I have not appointed the ordinances of heaven and earth; then will I also cast away the seed of Jacob, and of David My servant, &c. Thus God reminds the sceptic and the doubter that His covenant with His Church is as firm as that with day and night. We of to-day are in the midst of a sceptical age, and some good people are alarmed at the growth of doubt, and at coldness and troubles in the churches. They firmly believe in the truth of Christianity, but they seem to have lost something of their faith in its conquering power. What does God mean by His covenant of day and night? It was equal to saying: If you can stop the daily rotation I have given to this earth, then you may stay the onward rolling wheels of My Messiahs chariot from the conquest of the world! Thats what God meant, and He has thus far made good His word. Judah, like Israel, for her sins, went into captivity. But unlike Israel, Judah was brought back to do Gods work for ages longer; and perhaps for more work in the future than we now understand. The Church lives and grows. Tier ministers are thousands of thousands. As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, neither the sand of the sea measured, no more can her people. The earth rolls onward, bringing day and night in their season, and the sun hears the missionary Angelus chiming around the globe. Let us study this sublime illustration. Look at the daily rotation of this globe, and imagine the power necessary to produce and maintain this rotation. Suppose we see what Gods oath of day and night means when represented by steam mechanics. Let us build our engine and run this revolving globe a while by steam power. The earth is not a fiat fly-wheel set upon its edge, but a massive sphere, 8000 miles in diameter. So, by the ratio of size of shaft to size of paddle-wheel on a large steamboat, the earth must be slung on a steel shaft about 250 miles in diameter and 10,000 miles long. It must be driven by an engine whose cylinder should measure 1200 miles bore and 2000 miles stroke, having a piston-rod 100 miles thick and 2500 miles long, working by a connection-rod 3000 miles long on a crank of 1000 miles arm, with a wrist 200 miles long and 50 miles thick. The piston of this engine will make but one revolution daily; but to do that it will travel 4000 miles, at an average velocity of nearly three miles a minute. The working capacity of this engine will be about fourteen thousand million (14,000,000,000) horse-power. It must be controlled by an automatic governor of infallible accuracy, and supplied with inexhaustible fuel and oil; and so run on, day and night, never starting a bolt, nor heating a journal, nor wearing out a box, age after age. The iron bed-frame for this machine must be 10,000 miles square and 4000 miles high, and not tremble a hair under the stroke that drives the equatorial rim of this fly-wheel globe up to a steady velocity of seventeen and one-half miles a minute, twenty times the velocity of a lightning express train! Wholl take the contract to build and run this engine? The vast mass must fly through space in the earths orbit around the sun, with a velocity of more than 1100 miles a minute. The Armstrong 100-ton steel rifle sends its 2000-pound steel projectile at the rate of 1600 feet per second clean through a solid wrought-iron plate 22 inches thick. But God fires this globe, 8000 miles in diameter, through space with 60 1/2 times the velocity of the monster projectile, and 2000 times that of an express train at 34 miles per hour. And our engine that gives it its day-and-night rotation must fly with it at that speed, and never lose a stroke! And these are very slow among the velocities of the starry worlds. And yet these velocities only represent what God does every moment by the abiding force of that first impulse He gave to this silent spinning globe when He shot it from His creating hand like a top from a boys finger! Now, imagine the infidel trying to seize, in its mighty sweep, the flying crank that runs this globe, to stop its revolution! What then? Did you ever see a man caught and whirled and mangled on a little factory shaft, reduced to a shapeless pulp in a moment? Even so it has ever been with those who have tried to stop the engine of Christianity. (G. L. Taylor, D. D.)

Divine plans of action unalterable

I. The Almighty both in the material and spiritual departments of His universe acts from plan.

1. The text speaks of a covenant with material nature as well as with David.

2. The Infinite One acts evermore from plan.

(1) A priori reasoning would suggest this.

(2) The constitution of the creation shews this. The laws of nature about which philosophers talk are only parts of His plan which they have discovered.

(3) The Bible teaches this. It speaks of Him appointing everything in nature (Gen_1:1-31; Gen_8:21-22; Isa_4:10-11; Psa_104:1-35. &c.).

II. The plan on which God conducts the material universe is manifestly beyond the power of His creatures to alter.

1. This is a blessing to all. If men could alter the order of nature what would become of us!

2. This is an argument for the Divinity of miracles, if miracles are changes in the order of nature.

III. The unalterableness of His plan in material nature illustrates the unalterableness of His plan in the spiritual department of action. It is not impossible for God to reverse the order of nature, but it is impossible for God to act contrary to those principles of absolute truth and justice which He has revealed (Homilist.)

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The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Jer 33:20-21. If you can break my covenant of the day and of the night — Called the ordinances of the day and night, Jer 31:35-36. Then may also my covenant be broken with David and with the Levites — A promise this, that the kingdom of Christ and a Christian ministry shall continue in the church to the end of time. And as his kingdom shall have no end, (Luk 1:32-33,) the words may also be construed as extending to the eternal state, in which, as Christ shall reign in glory for ever, so his saints shall be priests unto God, and reign for ever with him.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Read Jer. 31:35.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

covenant of the day--that is, covenant with the day: answering to "covenant with David" (Jer 33:21, also Jer 33:25, "with day"; compare Jer 31:35-36; Lev 26:42; Psa 89:34, Psa 89:37).

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 20. If ye can break my covenant of the day] See Clarke on Jer 31:36.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

We now perceive the purpose of the Prophet in saying, If void ye can make my covenant respecting the day and the night, then abolished shall be my covenant with David and the Levites Now he indirectly touches on the wickedness of the people; for the Jews did, as far as they could, overthrow, by their murmurs and complaints, the covenant of God; for in their adversities they instantly entertained the thought and also expressed it, that God had forgotten his covenant. This want of faith then is intimated by the Prophet, as though he had said, “Why are these complaints? It is the same thing as though ye sought to pull down the sun and the moon from the heavens, and to subvert the difference between day and night, and to upset the whole order of nature; for I am the same God, who has settled the succession of day and night, and has promised that the Church shall continue for ever: ye can, therefore, no more abolish my covenant with David than the general law of nature.” We now then understand the Prophet’s object: for this was not said without conveying reproof; because they were very wicked and ungrateful to God, when they doubted his truth and constancy, respecting the promise as to the perpetual condition of the Church. He in short intimates that they were carried away, as it were, by a blind madness, when they thus hesitated to believe God’s covenant, as though they attempted to subvert the whole world, so that there should be no longer any difference between light and darkness.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

Thus saith the Lord, if you can break my covenant of the day,

and my covenant of the night,.... The same with the ordinances of the sun, moon, and stars, Jer 31:35; the original constitution and law of nature, settled from the beginning of the world, and observed ever since, in the constant revolution of day and night; and which was formed into a covenant and promise to Noah, after the deluge, that day and night should not cease, as long as the earth remained, Gen 8:22; and which has never been, nor can be, broken and made void: so

that there should not be day and night in their season; or turn; continually succeeding each other: this, as it would not be attempted, so could never be effected by any mortals, if it were.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

By the

covenant of day and night here is meant the same with the ordinances mentioned Jer 31:35. God’s law established in the course. of natural causes, by virtue of which the day and night orderly succeed one another. These verses are but a further confirmation of what was said before, and the sense of them no more than this, that the succession of the gospel ministry in the church of God, to abide for ever, should be as certain as the succession of darkness and light; God had established the latter in a necessary course of natural causes, and he would by his providence take care for the other, that the effect should be every whit as certain. Though the second causes are widely different, yet God, who is the First Cause of both, is the same, and would as certainly bring the one to pass as the other.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

GOD’S PERPETUAL COVENANT, Jer_33:19-26.

20. My covenant of the day, etc. — An appeal to the changeless and irresistible ongoing of nature, the innumerable host of stars, and the immeasurable quantity of the sand, as symbols of the stability and exhaustlessness of the divine resources. The stability of the physical universe leads to the stability of God’s higher kingdom; and its wonderful extent and variety suggest the infinite and all-comprehending character of the divine plans.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Vers. 20-22. The constant, regular succession of day and night is an emblem of the equally regular supply of royal descendants of David and of Levitical priests, and the countless grains of sand are symbolic of the wonderful increase of their numbers. At first sight the latter part of the promise seems a little unlike a blessing. But we have seen already (on Jer_19:3) that the members of the various branches of the royal family probably occupied the principal offices of the state, and the prophet imagines the future in forms borrowed from the present. A numerous sacerdotal class seemed equally necessary for the due magnificence of the ritual; and we must remember that preternatural fertility of the soil was a standing element of Messianic descriptions. The expressions used are, no doubt, hyperbolical, but the meaning seems clear enough. (Hengstenberg"s notion, that the prophet rather indicates the abolition of the royal and sacerdotal distinctions, (comp. Exo_19:6) is surely very far fetched.)

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

My covenant - The same with the ordinances mentioned, chap. xxxi, 35. God's law established in the course of natural causes, by virtue of which the day and night, orderly succeed one another. The succession of the gospel ministry in the church of God to abide for ever, shall be as certain as the succession of darkness and light.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

If you break My covenant with the day If you can break My covenant that I formed with the day and with the night to be in their time, which I formed with Noah and his sons, “And day and night shall not cease” (Gen. 8:22).

Rashi on the Tanakh — English translations: “The Judaica Press complete Tanach with Rashi, translated by A. J. Rosenberg” (CC BY 4.0); “Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary by M. Rosenbaum and A.M. Silbermann, 1929-1934” (public domain); “The Metsudah Tanach series, Lakewood, N.J” (CC BY 4.0); and “The Book of Joshua, Metsudah Publications, 1997” (CC BY 4.0). Text via Sefaria.