Hermann Spieckermann, «God's Steadfast Love Towards a New Conception of Old Testament Theology», Vol. 81 (2000) 305-327

This article argues in favour of a conception of Old Testament theology that is aware of the different hermeneutical presuppositions due to the different canonical shapes of the Jewish and the Christian Bible, respectively. An Old Testament Theology based on the canon of the Christian Bible has to do equal justice to the Hebrew and to the Greek version of the Old Testament, acknowledging that the Greek version, the Septuagint, is a dominant factor for the emergence of Christian faith. Perceiving the Old Testament from a Christian point of view sheds new light on a central theological issue thus far underestimated in scholarly research: God's steadfast love. The contribution tries to show how this characteristic insight into God's true being is reflected and interpreted in the different parts of the Old Testament.

Torah on the Israelites’ hearts, thus effecting immediate knowledge of God which men are incapable of achieving by themselves. God, however, makes them capable of it by planting the Torah into the hearts and combining it with an extensive forgiving of sin. Asking for the reason that may have induced God to this revival of his relation with Israel, the preceding passage unfolds the motif by referring to other prophetic writings and texts in the Old Testament. The intertextual dialogue with other, also still-developing books, proves Jer 31 — at least as a composition — to be a product of post-exilic times. The most important partners within this dialogue are the growing books of Hosea and Isaiah. In order to understand God’s decision to establish a new covenant in Jer 31, the references in the Book of Hosea are most significant. The text Hos 2,16-22* talks about God’s courting Israel again, about his covenant with animal creatures to Israel’s benefit, and about his betrothal to Israel because of his loving mercy. In Jer 31,2-3 those Israelites who have escaped from the disaster in 587 rediscover God’s favour (Nx) in the wilderness and return into the land. They are guided by that God who again reveals himself and again offers a knowledge that Israel obviously had lost: ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love (Mlw( tbh)); therefore I have continued my faithfulness (dsx) to you’ (31,3b). Whereas God strives for a new betrothal to Israel because of his love in Hos 2, he strives for the new covenant because of his love in Jer 31. Although it is the same love in Hosea and Jeremiah, eternal love in Jer 31,3 obviously has a different intensity. The new covenant is more than a new betrothal. Israel may again be an acceptable partner in the covenant because the new covenant reforms Israel herself. Knowledge of God becomes something immmediate in Jer 31,34, as the Torah is right within the people’s hearts²⁸. In Jer 31