But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says Yahweh: I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people:
⛓ Read Jeremiah 31 forward — the whole chapter and its afterlife →Where this passage surfaces again, sorted by the strength of the link. Each kind of reuse — formal quotation, deliberate allusion, faint echo, figural pattern — carries its own mark. Follow any reference to read it in place.
Allusion7
A deliberate verbal borrowing without a citation formula.
'Written... on tablets of human hearts' echoes Jeremiah 31:33, where God promises to 'put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.' Recurrence is strong: Paul names a 'new covenant' (3:6) directly from Jer 31:31, making the heart-inscription allusion here mutually reinforcing and high-confidence.
High confidenceThe new-covenant promise that the law would be inward 'Spirit not letter' depends on Jeremiah 31:33 ('I will write it in their hearts'). Recurrence with 3:3 and 3:6's covenant language makes this a coherent, high-confidence allusion to the same oracle.
High confidenceThe new covenant in which God writes the law on the heart explains how an "old commandment" can be "new" and "true in him and in you." The interiorized commandment of the new covenant is the love that John says is now realized.
Medium confidenceThe new covenant writes the law on the heart so the people keep it from within, undergirding the union of commandment-keeping and mutual indwelling ('he remains in us'). John's interior obedience and abiding reflect this new-covenant interiority. A strong conceptual parallel to keeping his commandments.
Medium confidenceThe new-covenant promise of an inward, Spirit-written law ('I will put my law within them') coheres with regeneration 'from above.' Recurrence of new-covenant texts (alongside Ezek 36-37) strengthens the cluster, though John makes no verbal quotation.
Medium confidence2:15 'the work of the law written in their hearts' verbally echoes the new-covenant promise 'I will put my law within them, and on their hearts I will write it' — though Paul applies the imagery to Gentiles' moral intuition rather than Israel's eschatological renewal, the borrowing is deliberate and ironic.
Medium confidenceThe Spirit enabling 'the ordinance of the law' to be 'fulfilled in us' (v.4) draws on the new-covenant promise to write the Torah on the heart, internalizing the law by divine agency rather than external command.
Medium confidenceEcho4
A fainter, low-volume reuse, carried by recurrence or thematic coherence.
'I will put my law within them and write it on their hearts' provides the new-covenant interiorization motif behind Paul's Spirit given 'in our hearts' as guarantee. The heart as the locus of God's confirming work coheres with Paul's establishing/sealing language. Recurrence with Ezekiel 36 strengthens the new-covenant background.
Medium confidenceThe new-covenant law 'written on the heart' resonates faintly with James's 'implanted word which is able to save your souls,' an internalized word effecting salvation. Contested but thematically apt.
Low confidenceThe new-covenant promise of the law written on the heart underlies the tension Paul dramatizes between the law of the mind/inward man and the law in the members (7:22-23)—the heart that delights versus the flesh that resists.
Low confidenceThe new-covenant law written on the heart/mind (LXX dianoia) coheres with the 'renewing of the mind' that enables one to discern God's will; faint verbal contact via mind/heart-renewal.
Low confidence